Why two engineers left Apple to build a Flash alternative: Hype's (YC W11) Story | Hacker News Reader

Why two engineers left Apple to build a Flash alternative: Hype's (YC W11) Story

thestartupfoundry.com

104 pointsg0atbutt18 comments

I worked at Apple. I was the engineering manager for the Mail.app back end (Mac OS X), but also worked on software updates, automation technology, SJ keynote demos, and other engineering projects.

I love how "SJ keynote demos" is something you put in a one sentence description of what he did. And what's even crazier is if I had to describe what this guy did to someone else I'd probably sound more like, "Built some of Steve Job's demos ... and did some other engineering stuff too".

At least this explains why there is no Windows client, although I'd still like to see one.

I don't know anyone who's been at Apple for awhile that doesn't have one or two stories like that under their belt. To me, the "other engineering projects" are the fun ones; the ones that people still can't talk about, even after leaving Apple (because it hasn't been released yet).

Good for Hype for taking this problem on!

Has anybody with professional Flash animation experience used this product? I think that there is a great market for something like this but I'm wondering if it's ready for prime time yet. The demos are a bit weak if you ask me.

It may be worth $30 to find out...

There was a discussion on it yesterday:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2568464

I doubt a majority of HNers saw the original submission.

Edit: To the pedantic downvoters, do you have to be completely hostile all the time? This is exactly the crap that is making HN a worse community-- a bunch of egotistical trolls chasing superiority highs. The problem is the trolls are more motivated to downvote than the normal people are willing to upvote, so eventually all interaction will be suppressed other than the few voiced the hive-mind accepts and agrees with.

~200 points, on the front page for at least a day.

I could understand if it was something that had tons of duplicates, but it's not that big of a deal when a company is still relatively unknown.

I didn't catch the other article, not everyone logs in within a 24 hour period. I found the article useful despite it being a resubmission and I otherwise wouldn't have heard about the company--apparently 37 other people agree.

It's cool. I really don't care either way - didn't flag it.

timsco was first post, the submission was still on /newest, had few points. It would have been silly not to point to the previous discussion.

Also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2569644

Peace ;)

Thanks for the link. It was a long weekend in Canada, and I went 48 hours without Internet access! ;)

I bought a personal copy and recommended it to my team. We're currently looking into using it to create some generic widget templates that can be used as inputs to a widget-making web application I'm going to put together. (The general plan is to enable our internal customers to create their own quizzes, interactive training, etc. by filling in some HTML forms, while ensuring that branding and so on remains consistent.)

My opinion is that Hype is great at what it does, which is allow you to create simple animations. It doesn't have anywhere near the number of features as Flash, but maybe that's a good thing. If you're comfortable with JavaScript and/or you're happy to take Hype's output and manipulate it further then I think you'll be delighted. And for $30 I really feel like I am stealing from them! (Maybe this public advocacy will go some way to restoring the balance.)

I've been doing Flash for about 9 years now, so here's my perspective. There are a couple classes of people that actually use the authoring environment.

Developers - Mostly looking a code, but may pop open an asset or movieclip to adjust the design or animation.

Animators - Tweening lots of layers of movieclips and audio. Apparently Hype doesn't do audio yet, and I haven't looked at how complex they can layer animations, think tweens inside of tweens inside of tweens. They also draw assets in the flash ide, so they need a vector tool.

Promotional - Split in to 2 categories Category 1 makes ads and promotional pamplets, Hype would work for them. Category 2 makes websites like the ones in Hypes gallery. Both categories need the ability to drop in audio and video from time to time though.

Edit - I think the biggest obstacle they may have is the lack of vector graphics, both at creation time as well as runtime manipulation.

Thank you. Great info. Hopefully, they'll add vector graphics soon. That's a big oversight in my opinion. That's usually where I start in Flash...

Wouldn't really categorize it as a flash competitor - it's an HTML5 builder (which is very needed, but different).

Well, it's not a competitor for Flash, the technology (which HTML5 is indeed a competitor of), but of Flash the program which is part of Adobe's Creative Suite and used to create Flash content.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#Adobe_Flash_Profess... )

Clearer - title and article could be clearer.

This looks amazing. Andy Clarke & others are working on a similar, web based, tool. http://animatable.com/

If we're mentioning and linking to web based CSS animation tools, let me humbly notify you of Edit Room:

http://www.edit-room.com

I'm the developer, and my development prototype is available to play with at that link. I believe my approach is both unique and will be a better tool for designing and animating in the browser.

Adobe is also taking on this problem: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/

These tools could win out on price, stability or simplicity but if Adobe doesn't screw this up, they I'd put my money on Flash due to it's advanced featureset.

That said, there's probably room for a few players in this space. Heaven knows Adobe needs the competition.

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