Microsoft bites bullet, licenses Adobe's Flash Lite for Windows Mobile

Microsoft is expected to shore-up its much maligned Internet Explorer Mobile browser this morning by announcing new Flash Lite support. We have no idea when the new plug-in technology (including Reader LE for PDFs) might make it into Windows Mobile. Nevertheless, with the far superior Skyfire and Opera Mobile 9.5 mobile browsers already supporting Flash Lite, and Microsoft's own competing Silverlight not expected to go mobile until the end of the year, it can't be long now can it?

[Neebs @ Mar 17th 2008 6:43AM]

Wow, ok, I've never seen a worse done story on Engadget. Seriously. Hit up the read link. It's got all kinds of details and this...this Mr. Ricker, what you've produced is merely an amazing amount of completely un-journalistic spin to appeal to your large Mac based audience and to troll on Microsoft.

Poor show.

[Neebs @ Mar 17th 2008 6:44AM]

And by amazing amount I mean, the whole article is, not as if you didn't truncate this story to hell.

[Thomas Ricker @ Mar 17th 2008 6:50AM]

If you remove that veil of emotion from your eyes for just a second you would realize that mobile IE is indeed, crap. I use it everyday, and I'm testing Skyfire and OM9.5 too. Adding flash support makes it crap with flash.

Thomas

[bob @ Mar 17th 2008 7:11AM]

erm,, where was the mac link? other than your comment.

[Chris @ Mar 17th 2008 7:19AM]

Neebs,

Are you a Microsoft employee? Because seriously, I read Thomas' writeup and I really didn't see a problem. I think only a Microsoft employee would be offended by it. All he did was mention that there are 2 superior browsers and that's just stating fact.

[Raheem @ Mar 17th 2008 7:20AM]

I'd say it was average, not crap.

[RC @ Mar 17th 2008 7:29AM]

Neebs, what are you talking about? Engadget does worse than this quite often. Don't exaggerate.

[fred @ Mar 17th 2008 7:48AM]

Thomas Ricker is the most biased writers on this site. If he isnt bashing Microsoft, he's praising Apple.

And calling a product "crap"? What are you in 10th grade?

Hell, even Apple fans can see his whole shtick.

[Rich @ Mar 17th 2008 8:21AM]

I think you're trying to link two unrelated items:

1) Engadget has an obvious Apple-bias (true)
2) PIE is the worst mobile browser around (also true)

[freakmarket @ Mar 17th 2008 8:36AM]

I am a windows guy for the most part and TR's assessment of the Pocket IE is dead on ... it's crap ... The only worse mobile browser is Blazer on the Palm o/s. Opera blows away IE as does whatever is on the Blackberry.

Windows Mobile in general needs an update bigtime ... it's become stale like Palm. It needs a total rewrite ... Vista Mobile ?!?!?!? ... ok ... maybe not.

Technology is getting close to where we could almost run a stripped version of XP on a handheld device. Maybe 4 or 8gb flash with a 640x480 4.5" touchscreen.

Anyways ... fanboy or not ... pocket IE is crap

[Matt @ Mar 17th 2008 11:07AM]

If you look at pocket IE as a desktop browser experience then your assessment of "crap" is correct. However, MS never claimed that PIE is meant to give you a desktop experience on a mobile device. It hasn't changed much at all over the last few revisions and it's designed to display mobile (WAP) pages, not full desktop content. MS is so far behind the curve on this one. Whatever happened to Deepfish? I'm pretty sure everybody and their aunt uses Opera for the desktop experience on mobile devices. I can't wait for Opera 9.5.

[patsy @ Mar 17th 2008 11:48AM]

@RC: If it's "average" there must obviously be better and worse browsers on WM. We know about the better ones, but which are the worse ones? Currently PIE defines the lower boundary of the "crap" category.

[webon @ Mar 17th 2008 6:49AM]

that sounds like bad news... but its actually good

[ColonelSmith @ Mar 17th 2008 7:11AM]

Not if your handset is a piece of crap.

[JAmerican @ Mar 17th 2008 7:17AM]

@ColonelSmith

I agree. Adobe doesn't know what efficiency means. All there apps lag in under-performing hardware. What do you think will happen on the phone front?

BTW I got Adobe Reader LE on my Dash with the Windows Mobile 6 update. What are you referring to Engadget?

JAmerican

[Raheem @ Mar 17th 2008 7:21AM]

Now can my iPhone has flash?

[webon @ Mar 17th 2008 7:40AM]

sorry what?

[Raheem @ Mar 17th 2008 8:11AM]

Who?

[aka_gus @ Mar 17th 2008 9:43AM]

haha

[ssuk @ Mar 17th 2008 11:00AM]

No. You can't.

[Raheem @ Mar 17th 2008 11:08AM]

Low ranked? For fucks sake I'm gonna stop making jokes.

[aka_gus @ Mar 17th 2008 7:50AM]

Why does it feel like Thomas gets all this hating all the time?? Is he really that terrible? (No, methinks not)

By the way, here's for hoping that Apple also bites the bullet and gives us some _real_ (albeit far from battery-friendly) internet. I realize more and more that it kinda sucks not to have flash.

[John Stracke @ Mar 17th 2008 8:50AM]

So how come the phone featured in the picture is a Nokia 6682?

[ssuk @ Mar 17th 2008 11:03AM]

Generic phone picture to meet the context of the article. Not to symbolise the article itself. I hope you don't take a lot of Engadget's images as literal reference to the article, else you're living in a dream world for sure.

[John Stracke @ Mar 17th 2008 12:18PM]

Yeah, I know. It's just a dumb choice. I suspect they used it because it already had the Adobe logo; would've been better to spend two minutes on copy-and-paste.

[Cal @ Mar 17th 2008 1:05PM]

Are you suggesting that engadget are expected to do real research? Or have basic mobile phone operating system knowledge?...

[orielsy @ Mar 17th 2008 11:33AM]

I don't really care if Mr. Ricker is biased or not.

But he did make a comparison between an existing browser and one that isn't even out to the public yet. I mean how do we know how great that other browser is if we "the public" have not evaluated it yet. After all we "the public" are the last voice on wether something is good or not.

Thats like me saying that the new Audi RS4 will blow away the M3 and its Mercedes competitor. Well the RS4 isn't even out yet. I don't care who test drove the prototype or something close to the finished product, it's not out yet.

In my opinion he is a little biased because of what I mentioned above. That and the fact that I clicked on his name and got to see a couple of negative spins on MS stories.

He even put a negative spin on people receiving free MS Office. !!!
(he tried to say that people gave up their "privacy" and I guess he wanted them to feel embarrased by that) Dude their getting FREE software, they kept their end of the bargain now MS is keeping theirs.

[joey @ Mar 17th 2008 10:22AM]

I have the flashlite 2.1 player for my WM device. Yet I havent been able to test it yet as when you try to visit YouTube it will redirect PIE to m.youtube.com. Which I can currently view using the HTC streaming media cab that has been floating around xda for sometime.

Unless the user changes the settings in PIE so that it will not be redirected to mobile versions of the site (engadget redirects PIE) how can one actually use flash lite?

Typing the direct YouTube.com/watchwhatever=RU(#&)* redirects to m.youtube.com as well.

[joey @ Mar 17th 2008 10:28AM]

I was finally able to pull up a site that uses FLV files and where the video would be there is text stating:

"Flash Lite 2.1 for Windows Mobile 5 will support Flash 7 content authored for mobile devices only."

Oh wells.

[michael @ Mar 17th 2008 11:49AM]

I see Thomas has forgotten about Safari not doing Flash either...

[Thomas Ricker @ Mar 17th 2008 1:40PM]

Er, maybe because Safari doesn't run on WinMo.

Thomas

[Stan @ Mar 17th 2008 1:44PM]

dont make it sound like iPhone and its flash incapable Safari is the greatest phone ever. I do own an iPhone, and beside being pretty to look at, it lacks some of the most commonly used features..which make it a terrible *functional* phone. Of course its fun to look at..

[Von Glitschka @ Mar 17th 2008 3:24PM]

Windows users need to just go hug their Vista GUI and stop whining. I am a diehard MAC users so why when I read it the first thought was "When is Flash coming to the iPhone?" Face it "Silverlight" is just another attempt by MS to control standards and once again like recent history they've failed.

[Stan @ Mar 17th 2008 2:34PM]

I dont think you fully understand what Silverlight is. Silverlight brings .NET capabilities to "flash". It allows designers and developers to integrate with ease.

Let me guess, .NET is crap too? That microsoft cant get anything right [/sarcasm]

[Brad @ Mar 18th 2008 3:35AM]

Right, because Adobe controlling the standard has done just wonders for the Mac and Linux communities? How about the rush to get Intel-native versions of all of Adobe's products out on the newer Macs? Why is it that MS controlling a standard is evil, when an equally abusively monopolistic party like Adobe is great?

Face it, MS will HAVE to be more open with Silverlight so that they can compete with an entrenched player like Flash. You can't wedge in a monopoly anymore the way you once could, users and critics are both much more interested in open software and standards. Hell, even Office documents are all XML based now.

So take your "I am a diehard MAC users(sic.)" mentality elsewhere.

[Von Glitschka @ Mar 18th 2008 5:13AM]

So is this only a place for Ballmerites to post? You know since you're asking me to hedge my technology preferences and all.

MS hasn't had an original thought in over a decade so stop crying. Look at their desperate attempts to get Yahoo! Why? Because they can't do it themselves. They lost nearly as much as they offered for Yahoo! in terms of their share values falling. Think how many start ups with original ideas could have been fueled with 40+ Billion? Yet MS has no problem dropping it to merely buy out a company who holds second place on the web. That is par for the course for MS. Just Borg it and go.

[Von Glitschka @ Mar 17th 2008 5:40PM]

Obviously that is rhetorical question Stan.

[The Behr @ May 29th 2008 4:22PM]

Can someone tell me if Flash Lite running in a Windows CE environment will only use its own Adobe rasterizer - or are there some cases - or is there some way - to force it to use the Windows rasterizer?