Archive for the ‘adobe’ category

Working Flash on iPhone and iPod touch?

June 14th, 2010

We all know Flash isn’t going to come from Apple, but it appears the man responsible for the Spirit Jailbreak may also have gotten Flash up and running on the iPhone and iPod Touch anyway. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if and when a capability like this is released, you’d have to be jailbroken in order to use it.

This appears to be a very early release but it still shows potential for those who really want/need Flash on their iOS devices. Perhaps an iPad release would follow shortly? Any iPhone or iPod Touch users out there who would jailbreak just in order to get Flash? Real or fake? Hit the jump for a video.

[via Redmond Pie]

YouTube link

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Posted in Announcements, News, Rumors, adobe, flash, iphone, ipod touch, jailbreak

Kinder, gentler Steve Jobs chimes in about Adobe in latest email

May 27th, 2010

In the latest email from Steve Jobs we are seeing a kinder and gentler individual who actually had something positive to say regarding Adobe. MacStories reader Josh Cheney shot off the following in a email:

“Do you hate Adobe and their products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) or do you just hate their view on Flash?”

Jobs then responded with some more than usual kind words:

“I respect and admire Adobe. We just chose to not have Flash on our devices.”

See, Steve does have a heart but we all know deep down he wants to bury Adobe with every chance he gets.

[MacStories]

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Posted in News, Steve Jobs, adobe, email, flash, sent from my iphone

Android 2.2 “Froyo” unveiling today – the competition

May 20th, 2010

Google seems set to announce the next version of their Android operating system, deliciously dubbed Froyo (frozen yogurt) at the Google I/O conference today. Android Central’s Phil Nickinson is at the conference and will be bringing us the action live and as it happens.

The exciting and terrifying thing about Google is that you never know what they’re going to do (and give away free) next. Last time it was Navigation, and TomTom is likely still reeling. This time it could be free cell service for everyone in Rhode Island. Who knows?! My official prediction is up as part of the Android Central Round Table. They’ve also got a ton of coverage from yesterday, which included the announcement of the VP8 video codec being released open source and freely licensed as part of their WebM initiative (which includes the MKV container and Ogg Vorbis audio codec), a Chrome Web Store, Adobe’s HTML5 exporter for Dreamweaver, Google’s foray into the 10″ TV “experience” with Clicker.tv, and more. Here are some more highlights, but join Phil and crew for all the live fun and we’ll be back with our thoughts later:

We’ve seen much of iPhone OS 4 (iPhone HD/iPhone 4G special features not withstanding), we’ve seen BlackBerry OS 6, we’re not sure what’s up with the next version of webOS yet (are we?), but after today we should see what Apple has to compete with when it comes to Google for the next half a year or so…

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Posted in Google, News, The competition, adobe, android central, apple vs google, clicker.tv, google io, html5, iphone vs android, vp8, webm

Adobe hearts Apple, hits them in userbase with open letter on openness, new ad campaign

May 13th, 2010

In the ongoing feud between Apple and Adobe, Adobe’s founders have posted an open letter, “thoughts on openess” and Adobe has begun rolling out a new ad campaign on Engadget — and presumably other geek-rich online sites — declaring their love for Apple, and then telling users how saintly Adobe, users like us, and little puppies are being hurt by Apple’s evil ways.

It’s smart, at least much smarter than Adobe’s initial responses to — and complaints to the federal government about — Steve Jobs’ “thoughts on Flash”, although it still pretends that Adobe isn’t as self-interested, controlling, and out for money and market share as Apple — which they absolutely are.

If the web fragments into closed systems, if companies put content and applications behind walls, some indeed may thrive — but their success will come at the expense of the very creativity and innovation that has made the Internet a revolutionary force.

[...]

We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.

Interestingly, Adobe’s open letter contains three registered trademark symbols (®), including one on Flash. Steve Jobs’ contained none.

Flash is Adobe’s. Tell us how popular it is. Make a phenomenal mobile version that does things so well it makes HTML5 cry in its standards-based containers. Win the case that Flash is better and too important to ignore. But continuing to pretend Adobe and Flash are open and end-user interests are what Adobe is fighting for is insulting.

Smart users know better. They’ve used Adobe products. Words aren’t going to make a dent now; it’s time for deliverables.

[Adobe via Engadget]

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Posted in News, adobe, adobe vs apple, flash, ipad, iphone, ipod touch, open letter

ARM, Opera, former US Secretary of Labor weigh in on Apple, Adobe, and Flash

May 6th, 2010

Companies and individuals as diverse as mobile chip-licenser ARM, browser-maker Opera, and former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich are offering opinions on Adobe, Flash, Apple’s restriction on cross-compilers, and rumors of an Adobe-prompted DOJ/FTC inquiry into Apple — and they won’t be making Adobe very happy.

ARM flat out says Adobe’s Flash has held back the delivery of smartbooks (think netbooks running on smartphone-scale ARM-processors). Adobe and ARM signed a partnership in 2008 and ARM hoped Flash would be up and running by 2009, but say it’s “slipped”. They think we’ll see it in late 2010 (though there was outcry the iPhone didn’t have it in 2007, right?)

Opera, makers of Opera Mini for iPhone, believe Flash still serves a purpose but that that purpose is no longer online video:

“But flash as a video container makes very little sense for CPU, WiFi battery usage etcetera – you can cook an egg on [devices] once you start running Flash on them and there’s a reason for that.”

Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor meanwhile wonders why Apple’s ban on the use of cross-compilers is even on the DOJ/FTC radar:

Apple’s supposed sin was to tell software developers that if they want to make apps for iPhones and iPads they have to use Apple programming tools. No more outside tools (like Adobe’s Flash format) that can run on rival devices like Google’s Android phones and RIM’s BlackBerrys.

What’s wrong with that? Apple says it’s necessary to maintain quality. If consumers disagree they can buy platforms elsewhere. Apple was the world’s #3 smartphone supplier in 2009, with 16.2 percent of worldwide market share. RIM was #2, with 18.8 percent. Google isn’t exactly a wallflower. These and other firms are innovating like mad, as are tens of thousands of independent developers. If Apple’s decision reduces the number of future apps that can run on its products, Apple will suffer and presumably change its mind.

Sounds familiar.

Steve Jobs’ open letter on Flash should be a huge wakeup call for Adobe. While they’re tried to play the victim for developers and complained to the government, increased adoption of H.264 and comments like these show they’re beginning to lose the mindshare battle. Fortunately it looks like Adobe is also going get into making HTML5 development tools.

I’d upgrade to CS6 in a minute for that.

[ZDNet, TechRadar via 9to5Mac, Robert Reich via TUAW, TechCrunch]

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Posted in News, adobe, adobe vs apple, arm, cross-compilers, flash, opera, robert reich

Adobe CEO responds to Steve Jobs open letter

April 29th, 2010

Adobe Flash 10.1 for Mobile

Choosing a live interview as his platform of choice, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen fired back at Apple and Steve Jobs’ open letter “thoughts on Flash”.

Roughly addressing each of Jobs’ points:

Narayan chuckled at the thought of Flash being considered closed. “Flash is an open specification.” They’re using different meanings for “open” here. Clearly Adobe owns Flash but they’re fairly open about its use. It’s a dependent standard.
It does not appear as though he addressed the full web question this time, but has said in the past 75% of video runs on Flash. He also didn’t address the growing number of sites bypassing Flash and going directly to H.264.
Security and performance were addressed by blaming Apple for Mac OS X. Since security for Flash (and Acrobat) are an even larger concern for Windows users, we’re not sure how seriously we can take him on that. We’ve also had enough Flash-related crashes on our Windows machine to not buy that argument either. Certainly, until the most recent version of OS X, Apple didn’t provide the low-level hardware access Adobe needed for better performance.
Narayan called Jobs assertion about battery life drain for Flash “patently false”. Jobs was fairly specific in separating out software decoding as being the drain. Narayan said every accusation Jobs made could be explained by an Apple proprietary lock. However, we’re not certain when Apple locked Sorensen decoding out of every chipset on the planet…
Flash websites being designed for point-and-click mouse interaction versus multitouch gestures was not addressed.
In response to Jobs’ “most important reason”, Apple’s desire not to have an intermediary exist between developers and iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices in the form of CS5 Flash packager-like cross-compilers, Narayan pointed to 100 apps already created in Flash and already approved for the App Store. However, he didn’t address Jobs’ point, which was that while easier for developers, it created a barrier towards platform feature implementation.

Countering a carefully prepared, piece-by-piece massacre of your product by someone like Steve Jobs and Apple marketing during a live interview is gutsy but probably not the wisest course of action.

Narayan also didn’t try to counter Jobs fatal thrust — that there’s still no functional, full implementation of Flash on mobile despite talk of it going back to 2007. He didn’t have to — no one should think for a moment that, even if Adobe could deliver functional, full Flash for mobile at some point in the not-so-distant future, that Apple would allow it.

Again, Apple views Flash just like IE6 and ActiveX — something that was once needed but is being surpassed by better, standards-based alternatives. That Microsoft held ActiveX and Adobe is trying to share Flash is irrelevant. To Apple, it’s just another anachronism, and we know Apple’s record on those.

Either way, both Apple and Adobe have now gone all in. Either Adobe ships an incredible version of Flash that blows mobile socks off world-round and gets users flocking to Android, webOS, and other alternatives by the millions, or Apple gets all the sites that matter to serve them direct H.264 and port their games over to the App Store.

The ground war has begun.

[WSJ blogs]

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Posted in News, Shantanu Narayen, adobe, adobe vs apple, flash, open letter

Adobe quits Flash packager for iPhone, Apple comments

April 21st, 2010

Adobe’s Mike Chambers put up yet another screed against Apple and their iPhone platform — specifically the disallowing of cross-compilers — this time basically saying Adobe was going to stop work on Flash CS5’s iPhone packager because:

The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development. The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms.

Adobe, of course, doesn’t care about devices because they don’t make devices. They make content development tools (CS5) and delivery platforms (Flash), and as much as they decry Apple wanting to “tie developers down to their platform”, that’s exactly what Adobe wants as well — they just want the platform they’re tied down to to be Flash.

Apple’s Trudy Miller responded to CNET:

“Someone has it backwards–it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary,” said spokeswoman Trudy Miller in a statement.

No doubt both companies are doing what they feel is best for their platform. Adobe makes things easier for developers and more plentiful for users, while Apple wants developers to make more purposeful apps that are better for their devices and users. Arguments can and have been made for both approaches. For Adobe to pretend they’re any nobler in these arguments, for them to use faux-nobility to try and rally developer and user support, however, is more than a little disingenuous.

Either way, Adobe seems to be throwing in the Apple towel and going all-in on Android, which is how they really should be handling this — on the technological battlefield by getting great Flash apps made.

Otherwise we’ll say it again — it reminds us of Microsoft when Firefox shook up the browser space after years of IE6 complacency and ActiveX lock-in. If nothing else, HTML5 might just get Flash going again, though if their as slow to respond as Microsoft has been getting IE9 to market, it might be too late.

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Posted in Apple, News, adobe, apple vs adobe, cross-compilers, cs5, flash

Why the iPhone didn’t support Flash in 2007

April 15th, 2010

Why didn’t Apple support Adobe’s popular Flash plugin way back in 2007 when it first launched the original iPhone 2G? Because Adobe still can’t get it to run on the most powerful, most modern 2010 devices Android, Palm and others have to offer. That’s why.

“We have a number of excited partners who are working aggressively with us to bring Flash to their devices, whether they be smartphones as well as handsets, and so companies like Google or RIM or Palm are going to be releasing versions of Flash on smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year.”

Maybe Adobe will finally get it working in Q2 2010, but we’ve heard that “it’s coming!” line once too often now, so forgive us if “partners working aggressively” gives us a something diametrically opposed to confidence.

The facts remain, however, that the iPad will run HTML5 video inline today (and iPhone OS 4 this summer) without even getting warm to the touch while our laptops and multicore desktops turn into noisy miniature blast furnaces when the plugin spins up on their far more powerful hardware.

Flash, like Internet Explorer 6 and ActiveX filled a need and became a popular if proprietary and problematic solution. Years without competition finally caught up with Microsoft by way of Firefox and WebKit, as it’s now catching up with Adobe by way of HTML5. Many years and incredible loss of mindshare later, Microsoft is scheduled to finally ship a standards-compliant browser with IE9. Maybe Adobe can work a faster miracle with Flash. But even if they do, HTML5 will have had months of mobile video delivery under its belt on a platform Apple predicted in their iAds (which also uses HTML5) introduction will soon be 100,000,000 strong. That’s a heck of a head start and Apple is not a company known to look back.

You didn’t have Flash on the iPhone in 2007 for the same reason you don’t have Flash on any mobile device outside a Nokia netbookphone today. For the same reason you can’t jump on a Corellian star-freighter and hit hyperspace for Endor. The technology doesn’t exist yet, and when and if it ever does, for Apple and the iPhone it will likely be too little, too late.

[Business Insider via PreCentral.net]

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Regarding rumors of Adobe preparing to sue Apple

April 13th, 2010

Just when you think the internet can’t take any more crazy it laughs, loosens its belt another notch, and unleashes something like ITWorld’s story about Adobe getting ready to sue Apple over the iPhone’s lack of Flash support or the iPhone OS 4 SDK prohibiting cross-compilers, or Canada winning Olympic hockey, whatever.

It’s not like the real news isn’t crazy enough right now, what with iPad and Adobe CS5 shipping and iPhone OS 4 getting previewed all within the last week or so.

Just what exactly is Adobe’s cause of action remains unaddressed, of course. Last we checked, being upset — even being righteously PO’d — isn’t grounds for legal action.

If ever Apple gains a true monopoly position in mobile and abuses that monopoly, then cases will no doubt be made (remember, you can have a monopoly, and you can be abusive, you just can’t be an abusive monopoly). Until that time, we get the feeling Apple is going to do everything they can to leverage their technology to get as far ahead of the mobile platform competition as they can. They’re going to go at a dead sprint, in fact, until they reach that very line. They want to be so far ahead by the time they have to worry about anti-trust and may be forced to switch gears, competitors will be too far behind to catch up.

Adobe’s only option is to do the same — take Flash further and faster than Apple takes the iPhone. Make it killer on the backs of Android or some other platform. That or sue Apple for patent violations if they have the portfolio stones, because as far as we can tell, there’s nothing involving the iPhone’s lack of plugin support or cross-compiler acceptance for them to sue over.

Of course, free enterprise means the freedom to sue just because, so ultimately who knows what Adobe will do. We’re not lawyers anyway, so if you are, correct us in the comments (pro bono, ‘natch).

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Adobe shakes tiny Vader fist at Apple, launches Flash CS5 Catalyst

April 13th, 2010

Despite Apple’s new iPhone OS 4 SDK licensing agreement preventing the use of cross-compilers, Adobe launched Flash CS5 with Packager for iPhone today which aims to do just that — let developers turn Flash apps into iPhone apps.

Adobe announced the complete CS5 suite of apps as well, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, but the mobile world’s attention remained fixed on Flash CS5 and the escalating war of words on the interwebs. While many developers are understandably upset with Apple, the countervailing trend from an Apple point of view is lining up behind the “control” and “quality” arguments. Apple doesn’t want to lose control of the iPhone platform to Adobe any more than it does to Google. It wants to release the OS it wants, when it wants, and not have to worry about third-party warlords holding it, and large percentages of its app user base, hostage.

Jason Snell at Macworld puts it this way in his treatise on Apple against the world:

Apple doesn’t want apps that don’t feel like native iPhone apps on the iPhone. It doesn’t want Adobe to aid developers in creating a world where App X for iPhone and App X for Android are indistinguishable from one another. Apple doesn’t want to introduce new iPhone features and then watch as nobody takes advantage of them because Adobe hasn’t updated its development system yet. Or, worse, watches as Adobe refuses to adopt them because the other operating systems don’t support those features.

If iPhone apps are one of Apple’s greatest assets, a lowest-common-demoninator app world is Apple’s greatest nightmare. Apple wants the iPhone app experience to be created using Apple’s native tools by developers who are engaged with the platform and falling over themselves to support Apple’s latest features. These are the developers who were downloading and installing iPhone OS 4.0 on Thursday and poring over the documentation, getting ready to dig in and start updating their apps for this summer’s release.

Louis Gerbarg of devwhy.com claims Apple has been held hostage, forced to dump APIs, change engineering plans, and otherwise been thwarted in the past by such dependencies. He also thinks Adobe shares some of the blame for the current situation:

Adobe is a large company with a significant, and complicated, relationship with Apple. They have frequent high level contacts and meetings. Adobe has known for quite some time about Apple’s desire not to have Flash on the iPhone. There is no doubt in my mind that if they asked Apple to bless this they were rebuffed, and if they didn’t ask the only reason they didn’t was because they knew Apple would say no. In either event, they announced the product to their customers and sold them on an idea they were not in a position to deliver, hoping Apple would be unwilling to piss off developers by not fulfilling Adobe’s promises. They tried to force Apple’s hand by putting Apple in a position where in order stop the Flash they would have to do it publicly in front of Adobe’s users. That was a bad call on Adobe’s part.

Personally, in this whole thing the most distasteful part is that Adobe used its userbase and their livelihood as a bargaining chip. These kinds of high stakes negotiations have happened in the past many times. They are much more common than people think, and until the last few years Apple was more likely to be on the weaker side of the negotiation.

Hence our titular metaphor of Vader shaking his firsts, but not the real Star Wars Vader, the tiny-handed one from Episode 3 who screamed “nooooooooooo!” while shattering everything around him. That Vader.

How this ultimately turns out is anyone’s guess, but if your immediate goal is to make truly great apps for the iPhone, you’ll likely do better sticking to Xcode for now…

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Adobe shakes tiny Vader fist at Apple, launches Flash CS5

April 13th, 2010

Jason Snell at Macworld puts it this way in his treatise on Apple against the world:

Apple doesn’t want apps that don’t feel like native iPhone apps on the iPhone. It doesn’t want Adobe to aid developers in creating a world where App X for iPhone and App X for Android are indistinguishable from one another. Apple doesn’t want to introduce new iPhone features and then watch as nobody takes advantage of them because Adobe hasn’t updated its development system yet. Or, worse, watches as Adobe refuses to adopt them because the other operating systems don’t support those features.

If iPhone apps are one of Apple’s greatest assets, a lowest-common-demoninator app world is Apple’s greatest nightmare. Apple wants the iPhone app experience to be created using Apple’s native tools by developers who are engaged with the platform and falling over themselves to support Apple’s latest features. These are the developers who were downloading and installing iPhone OS 4.0 on Thursday and poring over the documentation, getting ready to dig in and start updating their apps for this summer’s release.

Adobe is a large company with a significant, and complicated, relationship with Apple. They have frequent high level contacts and meetings. Adobe has known for quite some time about Apple’s desire not to have Flash on the iPhone. There is no doubt in my mind that if they asked Apple to bless this they were rebuffed, and if they didn’t ask the only reason they didn’t was because they knew Apple would say no. In either event, they announced the product to their customers and sold them on an idea they were not in a position to deliver, hoping Apple would be unwilling to piss off developers by not fulfilling Adobe’s promises. They tried to force Apple’s hand by putting Apple in a position where in order stop the Flash they would have to do it publicly in front of Adobe’s users. That was a bad call on Adobe’s part.

Personally, in this whole thing the most distasteful part is that Adobe used its userbase and their livelihood as a bargaining chip. These kinds of high stakes negotiations have happened in the past many times. They are much more common than people think, and until the last few years Apple was more likely to be on the weaker side of the negotiation.

How this ultimately turns out is anyone’s guess, but if your immediate goal is to make truly great apps for the iPhone, you’ll likely do better sticking to Xcode for now…

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Steve Jobs says cross-compilers (like Flash CS5) make sub-standard apps

April 11th, 2010

As he’s been doing a lot lately, Apple CEO Steve Jobs replied to an email from a developer concerned about iPhone 4 SDK’s ban on using cross-compilers like Flash CS5 or MonoTouch to create apps.

After a brief exchange about Daring Fireball’s article on the matter, Greg Slepak wrote:

I still think it undermines Apple. You didn’t need this clause to get to where you are now with the iPhone’s market share, adding it just makes people lose respect for you and run for the hills, as a commenter to that article stated:

[...] I don’t think Apple has much to gain with 3.3.1, quite the opposite actually.

To which Jobs sent (not iPhone or iPad this time, but from his Mac):

We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

That users are picking sides is interesting. Adobe wants to control the creation and distribution tools (Flash CS5 and the Flash plugin). Apple wants to control the creation and distribution tools (Xcode and App Store). There’s a battle going on for the next generation of computing, with Google, Microsoft (who won the last one) and others deep in the mix and they all want desperately to win. Both are good or evil depending on how closely their goals mirror the individual’s in question. So, while picking sides is inevitable for some, it’s also part of each company’s strategy.

[Tao Effect via 9to5Mac]

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Posted in Development, News, Steve Jobs, adobe, apple vs adobe, cs5, monotouch, sent from my ipad

Adobe fires back at Apple over cross-compiler ban

April 9th, 2010

With the apparent iPhone 4.0 SDK ban on cross-compiled code, Adobe has begun firing back at Apple. The New York Times Bits Blog carried the following statement from Adobe:

We are aware of Apple’s new SDK language and are looking into it. We continue to develop our Packager for iPhone OS technology, which we plan to debut in Flash CS5

The TheFlashBlog (which readers might remember from iPad porn posts past) took it far more personally:

What is clear is that Apple has timed this purposely to hurt sales of CS5. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D.

[...] Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.

The timing does seem interesting. Apple could have put this in iPhone 3.2 for iPad. They could have skipped iPhone 4.0 betas and put it in the final iPhone 4.0 GM release (rendering wasted all the apps (time and money) developers had built using CS5 between Flash release and iPhone 4.0 release).

The timing could be to hurt Adobe CS5 sales (though certainly lots of creative professionals use CS5 for reasons that have nothing to do with Flash cross-compiling) or it could be an advance warning to developers not to use those tools because they won’t be allowed (or perhaps even compatible) with the final iPhone 4.0 release. Spending several months making an iPhone app in CS5 and then not being able to run it under iPhone 4.0 would be worse.

Ultimately, the language used by Apple is unclear and everyone is going to waste a lot of time and worry until it’s clarified.

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Posted in News, adobe, cross-compilers, cs5, flash, iphone 4.0, iphone 4.0 sdk, iphone sdk

Flash CS5 Can Compile iPhone Apps, Launches April 12

March 24th, 2010

Adobe has announced that their CS5 suite, the latest version of their industry leading content creation tools like Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, will be launching April 12 (with availability likely to follow at a point that is later).

The big news for iPhone developers is that Flash CS5, as previously reported, will allow ahead-of-time-compiling that should allow for easy (or easier) porting of Flash apps to the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

So, if you prefer developing in Flash rather than Xcode and don’t mind the lack of interface builder tools, you can stay in Flash and spit out iPhone binaries. (Just please — please — make them awesome).

Though not specifically iPhone related, Adobe is providing some sneak previews of other CS5 apps, including one I still don’t — nay, can’t — believe is real: content aware fill for Photoshop (embedded below, but watch it on as big a screen as you can.)

Now if they were to add this to an iPad version of a PhotoShop.com app…

YouTube link

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Posted in Development, News, adobe, content aware fill, cs5, flash, photoshop

Flash-Free Versions of NPR, Wall Street Journal Web Sites Coming for iPad

March 17th, 2010

iPad_flash

All Things Digital is reporting that NPR along with The Wall Street Journal are just a few of the big-name media outlets preparing Flash-free versions of their respective sites specifically for Apple’s new iPad.

While National Public Radio is scrambling to have their iPad application available for the iPad release date, they are also putting the finishing touches on their app alternative solution for users to listen to their programming directly from the iPad on April 3rd.

“Use the iPad’s browser to visit NPR.org, which will detect that it’s being viewed with Apple’s device and serve up a custom-built site. This means no trace of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, which is used to power graphics and media on the site.”

The Wall Street Journal will also have their Flash-free, iPad specific, front page in a few short weeks. However, the deeper you click into their site you will find that Flash does still exist. That’s certainly understandable given how large the site is and how deeply Flash content, especially video and advertising, has been integrated. Detecting iPad Safari’s unique user agent string might be easy enough (that’s how so many sites detect and deliver iPhone optimized web sites already), but setting up complete mirrors absent Flash is by no means a simple task and may not be a viable solution for those sites out there that depend on Flash to display most of their content. (Though hopefully it will cause sites that use Flash for no reason — we’re looking at you restaurants! — to rethink the decision and switch to more basic, searchable, and friendly standards based technologies).

As the battle between Adobe and Apple over Flash continues to heat up, it’s interesting to see where the chips are falling. Is not having Flash on the iPad or iPhone still a concern to you? Let us (and them) know how you feel in the comments!

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Posted in Apple, News, WSJ, adobe, flash, ipad, iphone, npr

CEOh-Snap: Jobs Calls Flash “Old Technology”, Adobe Calls Apple “Proprietary Lock”

February 18th, 2010

Valleywag claims “people familiar with the meeting” between Steve Jobs and the Wall Street Journal have told them Apple’s CEO once again dismissed Flash as “old technology”, while Bloomberg News reports on Adobe CEO, Shantanu Narayen calling Apple a “proprietary lock”.

Jobs apparently repeated claims that Flash is buggy and crashes Macs, is a CPU hog with security holes, would reduced battery life to 1.5 hours, and was basically old technology, something Apple doesn’t spend time on and historically jettisons quickly, like floppy drives, FireWire 400, and even optical drives on the MacBook Air. Switching to H.264 was said to be trivial, though Valleywag points out it’s fairly non-trivial in implementation.

Narayen, commenting on the record, had this to say:

“Considering the amount of content on the Web that uses Flash — not allowing your consumers to access that content isn’t showing off the Web in all its glory. Apple’s business model is more trying to maintain a proprietary lock.”

Since, Open Screen Project or not, Flash is ultimately controlled by Adobe while HTML5 is an open standard, the “proprietary lock” comment is a tad ironic. Narayen, however, also pointed out that Flash 10.1 was the the “middle-ground” solution Jobs himself asked for following the launch of the iPhone — more fully featured than Flash Lite, not as resource intensive as Flash (Full).

The Apple vs. Adobe, iPhone vs. Flash debate has beaten whole heaping herds of horses to death now, so we’ll just ask you this — do comments from the CEOs, on the record or gossipy alike, inform or sway your opinion in any way?

[via Macrumors, iLounge]

CEOh-Snap: Jobs Calls Flash “Old Technology”, Adobe Calls Apple “Proprietary Lock” is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Adobe Says 7 Million iPhone OS Users Tried to Download Flash — Would Hulu App Fix That?

February 10th, 2010

flash9-iphone-400x212

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, according to Adobe 7 million iPhone and iPod touch users attempted to download Flash in December, well over the 3 million who tried back in June. We wonder how many of those were for Hulu, and whether rumors of a Hulu app for iPad would change them significantly?

Engadget feels that both Apple and Adobe’s competition (competing smartphone platforms that will soon include Flash 10.1, and competing video and rich-content delivery systems from HTML5 to Silverlight which now streams H.264 to the iPhone) are the only ones who will benefit.

We figure technology might as well, as Flash is forced to make less resource intensive, more security and privacy-friendly plugins and Apple and others are forced to make and push alternatives.

Case in point, Hulu. Techcrunch and 9to5mac hear a a Hulu app might still be in progress and set to launch in March in time for the iPad. Their videos are already H.264 so no conversion is required, but they make money off their advertising, which is entirely Flash-based now, and would need to either be replaced with HTML5 for a web app, or Cocoa touch for a native App Store app.

Either way, we’re still waiting..

Adobe Says 7 Million iPhone OS Users Tried to Download Flash — Would Hulu App Fix That? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Posted in App Store Apps, Development, Hulu, News, Rumors, Web Apps, adobe, flash, ipad, iphone

On Flash Crash and Sublime HTML5 Video Clash

February 7th, 2010

iPhone SDK: Smashing Flash Rumors

We all know by now there’s no Flash on the iPhone or iPod touch, and it doesn’t look like there’ll be Flash on the iPad, which is probably why Adobe’s Chief Technology Officer fired off an impassioned defense of the plugin, while a software engineer shows how a still-unfixed bug crashes it, and the first full on HTML5 video player concept makes its debut.

First up, Adobe CTO, Kevin Lynch has posted a full throated defense of Flash on his Adobe Blog and in a follow up comment notes:

Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don’t ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today.

How does this reconcile with Apple CEO, Steve Jobs saying something along the lines of “Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash“? TUAW draws our attention to Matthew Dempsky who found a bug that causes Flash to crash in Safari and Chrome, and Firefox to crash completely. And Adobe hasn’t fixed it some 16 months later… Dempsky has created http://flashcrash.dempsky.org/ to demonstrate (remember, it will crash Firefox completely!), and says:

This page exploits a bug that I reported to Adobe in September 2008, and has affected every release of Flash on every platform since then. Despite numerous email exchanges with the Flash product manager about the bug, the bug report being hidden from the public for “security” reasons, and [although] Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch’s claims otherwise, it continues to be an issue. [...] I’m just a software engineer who at one time had to deal with Adobe’s sorry excuse for a development platform and made an earnest effort on several occasions at helping them improve it for everyone. (This issue is merely the tip of the iceberg of ridiculous bugs and random backwards and forwards incompatibilities known as Adobe’s Flash Player plug-in.)

TUAW makes the case that Adobe’s been resting on their de facto-standard laurels.

Daring Fireball, meanwhile links to SublimeVideo, the first (to our knowledge) full on HTML5 and JavaScript alternative video player. It’s still early days, of course, but it works without a plugin, doesn’t buffer until you tell it to, and lets you jump to any point in the video with fairly robust controls — and more to come.

(And Gruber also notes that MPEG LA, owners of H.264, the proprietary codec used by Apple’s gear and online in Safari, Chrome, and Flash — but not in Firefox — have announced it will remain without charge for free-to-end-user video through 2016)

Lynch, and former Macromedia Flash MX co-creator, Jeremy Allaire on TechCrunch, make valid points that HTML5 can’t replace Flash and that Adobe works really hard on both.

In an ideal world, however, perhaps HTML5 can relieve Flash of some of the duties for which it’s unsuited, give us back a lighter, cleaner, faster web overall, and let Flash and Adobe concentrate on those tasks for which there is no Flash alternative — complex data visualizations, for example.

(And we’d also appreciate it if Flash stopped allowing websites to abuse local settings by storing “cookies” on our system — okay Adobe?)

[Via TUAW, Daring Fireball]

On Flash Crash and Sublime HTML5 Video Clash is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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CEOh-Snap: Steve Jobs Says Adobe Lazy, Flash Buggy, Google Wants to Kill iPhone, Not “Not Evil”, Next iPhone A+ Update?

January 31st, 2010

iphone_vs_android_kill_switch

According to an anonymous source in attendance at Apple’s recent, internal iPad town hall meeting at the Cupertino campus, Steve Jobs answered some employee questions by saying “Adobe is lazy” and that Google’s “don’t be evil” motto was “BS”. Wired reports:

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

Wired points out that, by getting around the App Store pocket veto and delivering Google Voice for iPhone via an HTML5 web app, Jobs should be careful what he wishes for. Google maps data and YouTube were shown off during the iPad launch, as was PDF support, though no Flash (despite some ad-related confusion).

More than a battle of words, however, this is a battle for control of the consumer internet experience — and the tremendous revenue that comes with it.

MacRumors brings a few more details on that:

Apple’s next iPhone is an “A+” update, and Android won’t be able to keep up with Apple’s aggressive pace.
iPad, iPhone, and Mac are the most important products Jobs has been a part of.
Lala was a talent acquisition to bring their people into iTunes.
2010 Macs will take Apple to the “next level”
Blu-Ray is still a bag of hurt, so Apple is still waiting on it.

An “A+” update for the 4th generation iPhone, eh? Bring it on!

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CEOh-Snap: Steve Jobs Says Adobe Lazy, Flash Buggy, Google Wants to Kill iPhone, Not “Not Evil”, Next iPhone A+ Update?

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Adobe Flash Blog on iPad/iPhone — Bad for Games, TV, News… and Porn!

January 30th, 2010

TheFlashBlog’s Lee Brimelow, Platform Evangelist at Adobe “focusing on the Flash, Flex, and AIR developer communities” has put up a series of iPad mockups highlighting a wide range of web sites all showing the blue lego brick of Flash plugin fail — and they feature the range of games like Farmville, news sites like CNN, TV sites like Hulu, and online porn like… well, you get the idea.

In all fairness porn is underplayed compared to the rest, but that it’s played at all by someone from Adobe is — forgive us — a ballsy move. Of course easy to access, free, online porn is a major reason a certain segment is upset there’s no Flash on the iPhone or iPad. Regardless of your personal feelings one way or another about it, porn is historically a huge early adapter of technology, including VHS, DVD, online video — now increasingly Flash-based — and even the iPhone via Jailbreak and web apps.

Brimelow is using the visuals, mainstream and adult alike, to point out how ubiquitous Flash is on the ‘net, and how Apple shouldn’t be calling the iPad (and previously the iPhone), the ultimate browsing experience” when it doesn’t include Flash.

That’s a valid point, and one Adobe’s Photoshop Product Manager John Nack addresses candidly and, in our opinion more convincingly, on his own blog. He made me rethink some preconceptions, so it’s well worth a read.

But Apple isn’t aiming the iPhone or iPad at the web, or computing, as it is today. They’re attempting to reframe their mobile devices as appliances for tomorrow. Yesterday’s web was all about Internet Explorer 6 and Microsoft’s proprietary ActiveX platform. Today is about Flash. We’ve moved passed IE6 and ActiveX, and Apple is betting we’re moving past Flash as well.

The porn industry, interestingly, will likely be one of the early indicators on whether that ends up being true or not. Along with sites like Hulu, Brimelow’s post might just end up being less an inditement of Apple today, but a checkbox for HTML5 conversion tomorrow.

As to gaming, Gruber’s right. How would Flash games written for a mouse and keyboard on an iPad — or iPhone — anyway? They’d need to convert them for multitouch and fingers anyway, and then why not make an app that fully leverages the hardware?

[Via Daring Fireball]

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Adobe Flash Blog on iPad/iPhone — Bad for Games, TV, News… and Porn!

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Politics and Practicality the Reason for no Flash Player on iPhone… and iTablet?

January 25th, 2010

iPhone SDK: Smashing Flash Rumors

Daring Fireball has an interesting post up regarding the continued lack of a Flash Player for the iPhone, and the reasons why Flash support for the iTablet/iSlate/iPad is unlikely:

I’ll leave the last word to Apple COO Tim Cook, who a year ago said, “We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.”

Flash is owned and controlled by Adobe.

Gruber breaks it down into several broad strokes.

According to Apple plugins in general, and according to sources at Apple, Flash in particular, is the leading cause of crashes on Mac OS X.
In order to make a 64-bit version of Safari on Mac, Apple had to create a new plugin architecture because Adobe (still) only makes 32-bit Flash and since Apple has no control of the Flash code, they have to work around it.
Flash is the only remaining major web technology that’s proprietary and controlled by one company, which is not good for the web, and if Apple can’t control something, they’d rather it be non-proprietary.
Flash performance on Mac OS X is poor compared to QuickTime. Adobe would like to address this via direct hardware acceleration, Apple would rather developers use the existing, higher-level QuickTime APIs.
Flash is used as a runtime, which Apple doesn’t support on the iPhone.

I’ll add two more things to this list, especially applicable to the iPhone:

Flash is an increasingly large target for malware attacks. While Apple is slow to respond to zero day exploits, Adobe is as well. The idea that Apple would have to wait on Adobe to patch an iPhone exploit is likely not appealing to Apple. Imagine how long iPhone firmware updates would take then?
Flash is privacy hostile, allowing sites to store “Flash cookies” which can restore deliberately deleted browser cookies and otherwise track user data. That Adobe still doesn’t better inform their users, and relies on an obscure website to provide controls is troubling to say the least. (That page is supposed to contain site-specific permission for Flash to access webcams. Mine contains entries for major online media sites and e-commerce stores).

Apple believes control helps them create the best user experience. It’s incredibly frustrating at times, but it’s how they’ve built their business and arguably attained some of their success.

I don’t believe for one moment Apple is pushing open standards over Flash for altruistic reasons. In this instance, however, their reasons happen to coincide with what’s better for the web. They’re also are one of the few companies powerful and popular enough to push HTML5 video.

The iPhone and quite possibly the iTablet are their best shot at doing that.

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Politics and Practicality the Reason for no Flash Player on iPhone… and iTablet?

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Adobe Getting Snarky Over Flash on iPhone

November 3rd, 2009

tumblr_ksja71XtL91qzqhmeo1_250

Adobe’s getting snarky over the continued absence of Flash on the iPhone, now presenting users with the above message which reads:

Flash Player not available for your device. Apple restricts use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch (sic).

Fair enough. Apple doesn’t allow code interpreters like Flash, Java, SilverLight, etc. on the iPhone. Even Apple’s own media plugin, QuickTime, doesn’t run inline on websites but rather launches a separate player app to show videos.

While the iPhone has an amazing web browser with Safari, it’s still a mobile web browser, and the iPhone doesn’t have anywhere near the CPU power, memory, battery, or other hardware resources that a laptop does, and even laptops can still be hit especially hard by Flash content. Maybe Adobe’s upcoming mobile friendly Flash 10.1 will finally present a really good, optimized, clean (and dare we hope secure and privacy-respectful) version of the plugin.

That is, if we’re getting the true story from either Apple or Adobe (as highlighted by this reddit thread, whether real or parody).

[via Adobe UI Gripes]

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Adobe Getting Snarky Over Flash on iPhone

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Adobe Releases Photoshop.com iPhone App

October 9th, 2009

photoshop_app

Adobe has released Photoshop.com Mobile [Free - iTunes Link]. The App Store is cluttered with a ton of photo editing tools, but this was one obvious omission. Nice to see Adobe fill it.

Crop, rotate, change color with just a touch.
Give an extra glow with Soft Focus.
Get artsy with Sketch.
Apply one-touch effects like Warm Vintage and Vignette.

The app can take photos with the iPhone and/or edit photos already on the iPhone or iPod touch, but can also use a free Photoshop.com account. It’s a cinch to set up. Simply take a few moments to open your photoshop.com account to edit, upload, store, and share all of your iPhone photos.

[Via The Loop]

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Adobe Releases Photoshop.com iPhone App

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More on Adobe CS5 Flash Compilation for iPhone Binaries

October 9th, 2009

Daring Fireball has been linking to some interesting discussions on Adobe’s recent announcement that Flash CS5 will compile “ahead of time” native iPhone binaries that can be submitted, as is, to Apple’s iTunes App Store.

First up, KickingBear reminds everyone to give it a chance before burying it just on concept or principle:

Let’s be frank here – **** the tools. If you’re as deep a fan of the Cocoa tool-chain as I am then you likely came to them as I did – after years of dealing with the drastically inferior. Do I believe Cocoa is still the best tool? Yes, I do. But let’s not pretend that it’s the only tool. Some crazy people may prefer other tools, and we may well think they’re insane for doing so. The proof, however, is in the pudding. And it’s the pudding that our customers buy. I’m in love with my oven and at this point I doubt I’ll ever change it but I have no illusions that fashion won’t pass me by. If Adobe, or anyone else, can produce tools that provide a more compelling application on the iPhone then good for them.

On the flip side, /dev/why takes a look at what’s generated by the current process:

Now, the notion that what this thing emits is indistinguishable from something Xcode emits is laughable. They are very different, and not in a good way. While the apps may get acceptable frame rates on an iPhone 3GS, they don’t on earlier hardware, and they almost certainly uses substantially more power battery than native games.

If you’re interested in the topic, give both articles a read and then let us know what you think.

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More on Adobe CS5 Flash Compilation for iPhone Binaries

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Adobe CS5 to Allow Flash to Compile iPhone Apps

October 6th, 2009

Since Adobe can’t get Flash on the iPhone — yet — they figure the next best thing is to let Flash CS5 and ActionScript 3 compile native iPhone apps that can be submitted to the iTunes App Store and run on iPhones and iPod touches everywhere.

In fact, Chroma Circuit, Trading Stuff, Fickleblox, Just Letters, South Park, The Roach Game, and Red Hood — all already on the App Store — we also all already developed using Flash and converted to the iPhone.

Like the earlier announcement from Novell about MonoTouch letting .NET compile iPhone apps, Flash is using the same “ahead of time” compilation instead of “just-in-time” to build the native apps.

Some will say this lowers the barrier of entry for developers to gain access to the App Store. We just hope it doesn’t make it so low they trip over it on their way in.

Again, from our point of view, it’s ultimate not about making things easier for developers, it’s about making things better for end-users. It’s not about us getting more apps, it’s about us getting better ones.

If a bunch of brilliant Flash (or .Net or Java or whatever.runtime) developers suddenly cross over and decide to make brilliant apps for the iPhone, then, yay! However, in our experience the truly brilliant developers are the ones who care so deeply about their apps they edit them down to the last sub-pixel level, and tweak the code until it behaves like it was born to the metal. In other words, those developers likely already picked up Cocoa like it wasn’t no thing.

The other ones, the ones who just want to pump out as many $0.99 CrApps as possible — yeah, we’re worried they’re turning our direction, and we have enough of them already, thanks very much.

Are we overly pessimistic? (Though we’re hardly the only ones). Do you think a lot of great Flash games will suddenly make the jump to the iPhone now? If so, name us your favorites, and let us know!

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Adobe CS5 to Allow Flash to Compile iPhone Apps

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