Upgrading & Flashing Innovation
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Wikipedia
Upgrading is the process of replacing a product with a newer version of the same product. In computing and consumer electronics an upgrade is generally a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to bring the system up to date or to improve its characteristics.
Examples of common hardware upgrades include installing additional memory (RAM), adding larger hard disks, replacing microprocessor cards or graphics cards, and installing new versions of software. Many other upgrades are possible as well.
Common software upgrades include changing the version of an operating system, of an office suite, of an anti-virus program, or of various other tools.
Common firmware upgrades include the updating of the iPod control menus, the Xbox 360 dashboard, or the non-volatile flash memory that contains the embedded operating system for a consumer electronics device.
Users can often download software and firmware upgrades from the Internet. Often the download is a patch—it does not contain the new version of the software in its entirety, just the changes that need to be made. Software patches usually aim to improve functionality or solve problems with security. Rushed patches can cause more harm than good and are therefore sometimes regarded with skepticism for a short time after release. Patches are generally free.
A software or firmware upgrade can be major or minor and the release version code-number increases accordingly. A major upgrade will change the version number, whereas a minor update will often append a “.01”, “.02”, “.03”, etc. For example, “version 10.03” might designate the third minor upgrade of version 10. In commercial software, the minor upgrades (or updates) are generally free, but the major versions must be purchased.
Companies usually make software upgrades for the following reasons: 1.) to support industry regulatory requirements 2.) to access emerging technologies with new features, and tools 3.) to meet the demands of changing markets 4.) to continue to receive comprehensive product support.
Although developers usually produce upgrades in order to improve a product, there are risks involved—including the possibility that the upgrade will worsen the product.
Upgrades of hardware involve a risk that new hardware will not be compatible with other pieces of hardware in a system. For example, an upgrade of RAM may not be compatible with existing RAM in a computer. Other hardware components may not be compatible after either an upgrade or downgrade, due to the non-availability of compatible drivers for the hardware with a specific operating system. Conversely, there is the same risk of non-compatibility when software is upgraded or downgraded for previously functioning hardware to no longer function.
Upgrades of software introduce the risk that the new version (or patch) will contain a bug, causing the program to malfunction in some way or not to function at all. For example, in October 2005, a glitch in a software upgrade caused trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to shut down for most of the day. Similar have occurred: from important government systems to freeware on the internet.
Upgrades can also worsen a product subjectively. A user may prefer an older version even if a newer version functions perfectly as designed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including the user being already accustomed to the behavior of the old version or because the upgrade removed some features (see iPhone jack removal controversy or Other OS).
A further risk of software upgrades is that they can brick the device being upgraded, such as if power fails while the upgrade is in the middle of being installed. This is an especially big concern for embedded devices, in which upgrades are typically all-or-nothing (the upgrade is a firmware or file system image, which isn’t usable if it’s only partially written), and which have limited ability to recover from a failed upgrade. Solutions to this generally involve keeping multiple copies of firmware, so that one can be upgraded while the other remains intact as a backup, but there are still holes which can cause this to fail. Tools such as Mender.io, Sysup, SW Update, RAUC, and OS Tree provide more complete solutions that implement upgrades in a safe atomic way, and reduce or eliminate the need to customize boot loaders and other components. Desktop systems are more likely to use something like snapshots or restore points; these are more efficient as they only require a small fraction of space to store the changes from the old system to the new one, but the lack of a turnkey implementation for embedded systems makes this impractical.
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash displays text, vector graphics, and raster graphics to provide animations, video games, and applications. It allows streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera input.
Artists may produce Flash graphics and animations using Adobe Animate (formerly known as Adobe Flash Professional). Software developers may produce applications and video games using Adobe Flash Builder, Flash Develop, Flash Catalyst, or any text editor combined with the Apache Flex SDK. End users view Flash content via Flash Player (for web browsers), Adobe AIR (for desktop or mobile apps), or third-party players such as Scale form (for video games). Adobe Flash Player (which is available on Microsoft Windows, mac OS, and Linux) enables end users to view Flash content using web browsers. Adobe Flash Lite enabled viewing Flash content on older smartphones, but since has been discontinued and superseded by Adobe AIR.
The Action Script programming language allows the development of interactive animations, video games, web applications, desktop applications, and mobile applications. Programmers can implement Flash software using an IDE such as Adobe Animate, Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Director, Flash Develop, and Power flasher FDT. Adobe AIR enables full-featured desktop and mobile applications to be developed with Flash and published for Windows, mac OS, Android, iOS, Xbox One, Play Station 4, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch.
Flash was initially used to create fully-interactive websites, but this approach was phased out with the introduction of HTML5. Instead, Flash found a niche as the dominant platform for online multimedia content, particularly for browser games. Following an open letter written by Steve Jobs in 2010 stating that he would not approve the use of Flash on Apple’s iOS devices due to numerous security flaws, use of Flash declined as Adobe transitioned to the Adobe Air platform. The Flash Player was deprecated in 2017 and officially discontinued at the end of 2020 for all users outside China, as well as non-enterprise users, with many web browsers and operating systems scheduled to remove the Flash Player software around the same time. Adobe continues to develop Adobe Animate, which supports web standards such as HTML5 instead of the Flash format.
In the early 2000s, Flash was widely installed on desktop computers, and was often used to display interactive web pages and online games, and to play video and audio content. In 2005, YouTube was founded by former PayPal employees, and it used Adobe Flash Player as a means to display compressed video content on the web.
Between 2000 and 2010, numerous businesses used Flash-based websites to launch new products, or to create interactive company portals. Notable users include Nike, Hewlett-Packard (more commonly known as HP), Nokia, General Electric, World Wildlife Fund, HBO, Cartoon Network, Disney, and Motorola. After Adobe introduced hardware-accelerated 3D for Flash (Stage3D), Flash websites saw a growth of 3D content for product demonstrations and virtual tours.
In 2007, YouTube offered videos in HTML5 format to support the iPhone and iPad, which did not support Flash Player. After a controversy with Apple, Adobe stopped developing Flash Player for Mobile, focusing its efforts on Adobe AIR applications and HTML5 animation. In 2015, Google introduced Google Swiffy, a tool that converted Flash animation to HTML5, which Google used to automatically convert Flash web ads for mobile devices. In 2016, Google discontinued Swiffy and its support. In 2015, YouTube switched to HTML5 technology on most devices by default; however, YouTube supported the Flash-based video player for older web browsers and devices until 2017.
After Flash 5 introduced ActionScript in 2000, developers combined the visual and programming capabilities of Flash to produce interactive experiences and applications for the Web. Such Web-based applications eventually became known as “Rich Internet Applications” and later “Rich Web Applications”.
In 2004, Macromedia Flex was released, and specifically targeted the application development market. Flex introduced new user interface components, advanced data visualization components, data remoting, and a modern IDE (Flash Builder). Flex competed with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and Microsoft Silver light during its tenure. Flex was upgraded to support integration with remote data sources, using AMF, Blaze DS, Adobe LiveCycle, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and others.
Between 2006 and 2016, the Speed test.net web service conducted over 9.0 billion speed tests with a utility built with Adobe Flash. In 2016, the service shifted to HTML5 due to the decreasing availability of Adobe Flash Player on PCs.
Developers could create Flash web applications and rich web applications in ActionScript 3.0 programming language with IDEs, including Adobe Flash Builder, FlashDevelop and Powerflasher FDT. Flex applications were typically built using Flex frameworks such as PureMVC.
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as “a new or changed entity realizing or redistributing value”. Others have different definitions; a common element in the definitions is a focus on newness, improvement, and spread of ideas or technologies.
Innovation often takes place through the development of more-effective products, processes, services, technologies, art works or business models that innovators make available to markets, governments and society. Innovation is related to, but not the same as, invention: innovation is more apt to involve the practical implementation of an invention (i.e. new / improved ability) to make a meaningful impact in a market or society, and not all innovations require a new invention.
Technical innovation often manifests itself via the engineering process when the problem being solved is of a technical or scientific nature. The opposite of innovation is exnovation.