Color us
unsurprised, but it's still notable to hear that Adobe is stopping investment in its software's capability to port content over to iPhone OS. The company's great hope on this front,
Packager for iPhone, will still ship as part of Flash CS5 as planned, but beyond that Adobe is essentially giving up on Apple's mobile OS until further notice. In spite of being repeatedly
rebuffed by Jobs and company before, the Flash maker had kept up hope that it could sway (or
nag) Apple into validating its wares, but the final straw in this relationship seems to have been Apple's
dev tool lockdown. So what will Adobe do now? Principal Product Manager Mike Chambers tells us that Android is doing
kind of okay and his company will shift its attentions to it and other mobile platforms. Of course, we're just giving you the cleaned up version -- for the full finger-pointing diatribe against Apple, you'll have to hit the source link.
Update: Right on cue, here's
Apple's terse response: "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."
posted April 21st 2010 3:25AM
Android is the future!
I kind of feel bad for Adobe Flash, html5 is the future!
@Techie
It's true that HTML5 is great, and I love it from a web standards point of view, but there is still a lot it won't do.
@Riccardo
How can we solve this predicament. HTML5 is still a ways away from taking over Flash's control over internet video but it will likely eventually happen even if it's a few years from now.
I know how to fix this. Support both like Android. Problem solved.
@Techie
I kinda feel bad for people who can't differentiate a programming language from a markup language
@Riccardo Android is welcome to it. "Take my Flash. Please." There's no way to put a heavyweight 2D rendering technology onto a lightweight mobile device in without it becoming a burden on the device, while keeping the product stable across all platforms, and preserving the FULL Flash experience (none of that crippled Lite crap).
"Oh, I don't view flash that often!" Not on purpose, you don't, but if you browse the web a lot on your device, you're gonna come across a flash ad on every other page. That loud sucking noise you hear is Flash... draining your battery.
@Techie Yeah sure HTML5 is the future .VERY MUCH in the future ...W3C Recommendation for html5 is pegged to be in the year 2022
@Alexicov
Thank you! (Although Flash isn't either... ActionScript is)
@Techie
You don't need to feel bad for flash yet,
because ATM it still owns and apple still has nothing.
Obviously thats likely to change, but you're discounting ADOBE a bit
early.
Dear engadget, thank you for so politely removing my highly relevant link.
@ShSaurabhSh Just because you can't do HTML5 yet, it doesn't mean that you can't use standards-based tools for dynamic web content. HTML4 + CSS + ExtJS, Cappucino, MooTools, jQuery or whatever other engine you want will let you create an amazing interface without needing to use Flash or Flex.
Video-wise though; yeah, we're a ways off from ditching Flash.
@Riccardo
To be honest, I don't f**king care. Android, iPhone OS; HTML5, Flash.
ALL I WANT is just SOME way to stream videos on my iPod Touch other than the videos on youtube. Apple should quit being so stubborn and work with Adobe, or convince the world to switch to HTML5.
GO!!!! NAO!!!!
@Outsider : "...convince the world to switch to HTML5"
Working on it.
--Steve
Totally NOT sent from a next-gen iPhone, you guys.
@macserv Its not about what can be done.Its a question about content already available on the web and why should we not support one of the major platforms on which the best animation/user interface already exists
@macserv
Flash's potential lies in opening relatively effortless cross-platform mobile application development to a vast amount of web devs. A rich but functional UI is not something that typically bogs down the machines. It's the unnecessary fireworks that are so loved by the marketing depts. What Flash authoring environment needs, though, is a really well thought out resource profiler, so that all the budding app devs coming from designer background learn to optimize for mobile devices.
As for web surfing, in some form or another, you _will_ have the option of disabling the plugin, but even then, it's nice to at least have the option of enabling it, if need be.
@Riccardo
Apple, you brought this on yourself. While Google, Blackberry platform and users soon will be enjoying flash, you will sitting there in the corner, slapping your own big mouth.
Buying iphone and ipad soon will be like buying a HDTV without the SD TV capability. There are a few HD channel and many more to come in a few years but have to miss all the current massive SD channels. So basically putting your money on a future technology without realizing by the time the technology finally mature, your old device will be obsolete.
@Alexicov .. I kinda feel bad for people that can't distinguish between a scripting language and a programming language.
@1mc .. Sounds great to me. I have been living without Flash for over a year now (I use Click To Flash) and I don't miss the ads and the horrendous interfaces you typically would see using Flash.
@Techie
How come? cuz html5 can play Doom?
@macserv
I don't care if it is buggy, crappy or whatever... Steve, let me decide whether to use it or no!
@1mc
You're right in spirit, but -- not to be a total HD nazi or anything -- the comparison should be digital TV without analog TV capabilities. Every HDTV has SD display capabilities. It's the digital vs analog thing that makes the difference. Every high-powered TV station was required to go full digital by the government -- but a handful of low-power stations were allowed to remain analog. And just because a station went digital, that doesn't mean they went HD. A lot of stations in smaller markets didn't.
Back to point -- yeah, Flash makes total sense in the here and now. Every business dealing with the web is dealing with flash. There's a significant investment in tools, product knowledge, platform, etc. They're not just going to abandon that.
@taligent, I kinda feel sorry for people that in this day and age make a difference between a scripting and programming language. That line doesn't exist for at least a decade. Now the division is between managed and non-managed languages, with each respectively split on interpreted and native execution. ActionScript is managed, interpreted language. Much like Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, and, lo and behold - C#, C++, VB and everything else running under .NET.
@macserv No - that loud noise is interactive iAds sucking down my battery. Are people really so blinkered they think switching technology will make the ads less annoying?
@Avex
that's how the world works i'm afraid. Instead of supporting another company's technology, Apple's managed to convince people that iAds will be less intrusive and annoying. An ad is an ad plain and simple.
Anyway everyone knows text link ads are superior for page relevance.
@Riccardo
I don't understand what's so open about Flash. Are there any non Adobe Flash players out there? Where can I download the source code to Flash player? Adobe needs to focus on making HTML5 tools. The same tools they have for creating Flash files, they need to make it create HTML5.
@Riccardo
Future my foot.
@macserv Yeah you can't do html 5 just like you can't do Flash Mobile 10.1 AS IT DOESN'T EXIST YET.
Adobe needs the extra time not devoted to Apple to get their CRAP out the door!
btw another quarter another 8.75 million Internet accessing mobile devices not coming to Flash site developers anytime soon.
@Riccardo
In the 3 Years I have used the various iPhone models, you know, not once have I ever needed Flash.
It's just one of those features people want cause other phones have it but when they get it, they would just be like "what is this for anyways?".
Boggles the mind.
@macserv I just want to point something out. The Nokia N900 has the complete full Flash experience, is not laggy, and has a very similar processor architecture to the iPhone 3GS. Now I would never buy an N900 because it sucks in every other way, but Flash on a phone works.
Also, everyone says flash causes computers to crash, even ones with i7 or whatever. Will I have a Mac with a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB's of RAM and an NVidia Geforce 9400m and Flash I not a problem. Maybe because i'm not like a power user really, I only ever have max 5 or 6 apps open at once, but my computer crashes sometimes but not with Flash really. I have never had Youtube crash on me as far as I can remember. Ever. Really. Or the videos on engadget. A couple flash built websites, but only if I'm doing lots of other stuff at the same time. But again for me lots of other stuff means iTunes, LastFM, Tweetie,3 or 4 browser tabs, Komodo Edit, one tab in a different browser, and maybe an FTP program. No video editing programs, games or Photoshop.
But I'm not a Flash fanboy or anything, I do think HTML5 is the future. But, well, in the future.
@tim3k Even though you can't do it on the iPhone/iPod touch, Steve Jobs is not stopping you from making your own choices. There are other devices you may choose to use. If you don't like the rules of his device then don't use the damn thing.
@Techie
Lol Srsly? Can your HTML5 do 360 degree video?
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2010/01/world/haiti.360/index.2.html
@iCello Linux desktop Flash on Maemo != Adobe Flash mobile 10.1 WHICH HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED.
Adobe can't put Flash on any device running iPhone OS as it hasn't been released on ANY mobile platform.
It's vapourware.
@TheGM
if you support both, then proprietary flash will never go away. Flash is not a standard - it is proprietary and monopolistic. People forget this fact.
@tim3k If you want to be the decider buy an Android. If you buy the iPhone you are living in Steve's world.
@macserv
you wait till steve jobs gets his way, an advert every 10 mins, and if you dont listen to it fully it shuts down functionality of your device, then shuts your device down
at least with flash ads all they do is slow you down a lil bit and drain a bit of battery.
benefits of flash > the drawbacks, Benefits of iads=none existent :)
@Riccardo Most like this tiff is a result of Apple looking to pay back Adobe for publicly announcing back in 1997 or so that they would deprecate development for Mac, despite Job's pleading not to do so at the time....
Android is supporting Flash only because it's a check box v. Apple. Full flash support will either increase the cost of hardware or performance will likely be poor. We'll see.
There was a time a few months ago when Google and Apple were worth the same. Then Google did Android and now Apple is worth almost $50b more than Apple! Isn't that ironic!
@Riccardo
Nokia is the future!
@iCello
Agree with you that Flash is the immediate future and HTML5 is the distant future. Big fan of HTML and its openness etc.... But Flash is here now, and I don't even like Flash sites, I want to read most of my web content, not have it spin around my screen at 100 mph!
Also agree that Flash doesn't have to bog down systems, even less powerful ones. Do some Flash sites slow down my netbook? Sure as hell they do, but I don't mean to upset the programmers here, that's a bit on your guys. Does anyone on this site remember the days when processors were measured in mhz???? Yeah we still had 3D and all that stuff... resources just had to be more efficient. A 64-bit i7 quad core can run the sloppiest shit in the world because there's plenty of power under the hood. A 600mhz iPhone, Android or Palm has plenty of power too. Its about writing good code.
And now to lash out at Apple fanboys for one second... Flash won't slow down the iPhone seeing as it can't multitask so there's no reason to worry about it slowing down other programs!
@JS, http://opensource.adobe.com/ ... All that you need is there, including most of the source of the Flash Player. You can't really blame Adobe for nobody writing an alternative Flash Player even tho they released the code behind it. Flash Platform is open, some of the Adobe tools and apps are closed, but nobody stops you from writing your own player. It is as claiming that HTML/JS is a closed technology just because you don't have the source for Safari or Internet Explorer...
@Punisher Plum - And to think, 1 week ago there was an application approved and in the Apple App store that let you brows flash websites easily. You heard it right “LET YOU BROWS FLASH WEBSITES ON AN iPHONE, easily”! To bad it was YANKED QUICKLY, once Apple caught wind of what it actually did even if the dev is saying (under pressure) that “they pulled it” for a keyboard issue. If yes lets see how fast it comes back. It won’t and they have other App store wares to peddle. The tech term for that is “dick move”! Sayin...
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/04/access-flash-sites-cloud-browse/
@hill60 Thanks for the reminder that Adobe is being denied the deployment of something they do not have. If Adobe had a fast, stable mobile player even mildly comparable to Flash on the desktop, and had this mythical beast all over the mobile web, the wailing and gnashing of teeth might be justified.
But they don't. So it's not. Good Bye, Adobe.
As an aside, there was no mobile web before Apple gave it to us. Remember WAP? The mobile web before Safari on iPhone was text. This is a frontier that Apple opened, and they hold the keys to the gate of the largest range.
Anyone who doesn't think Adobe has this coming, especially from Apple, and especially now that Apple is back on top... well, you simply haven't been paying attention.
@JS that's what HTML 5 offers in terms of movie control. It's a formatting language, nothing more.
@His Shadow, funny, I was browsing web, full HTML w/ JS, CSS1 & CSS2, on my Nokia 6600 about almost 4 years before the first iPhone. It also had MMS, multi-tasking, copy&paste and tons of other features than even the iPhone doesn't yet have... Further, I was surfing in a desktop-grade browser on my Nokia N800 WITH full Flash Player as well. And I'm doing that on my N900 as well... Yeah, right, Apple invented the mobile web...
@incognito
"ActionScript is managed, interpreted language. Much like Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, and, lo and behold - C#, C++, VB and everything else running under .NET."
Not really, while PHP's bytecode can be cached by the server, in essence it remains a 100% interpreted language, hence you don't have to rebuild after you change a single line of code. Java, Actionscript are both core languages, they just aren't compiled into machine instruction like is the case with C++. They use bytecode which is to be managed in their respective runtimes. My point is that there are differences that are worth noting.
@7egend
That's funny.
I pretty much found the browser to be terribly limiting from the moment I started using it. Nevermind Flash. I would just like a proper browser with correct handling of basic HTML elements like frames and combo boxes.
Without the app store to make up for the crappy browser, the iPhone experience would be very much like using an Archos.
@macserv Says you. No offence, but unless you're an Adobe engineer you really have no idea what they might have in store for the player.
@Kwame Nkrumah
Uh oh, someone woke Krwame up, our resident Apple endorsing poster.
Are you on some sort of rewards program with them Nkrumah, or do you just feel the need to be a zealot all over these forums daily for no other reason then to post the usual inaccurate FUD.
@(Unverified)
Inaccurate? Maybe if you got a proper functioning brain, you would understand what I'm saying.
@(Unverified)
Nice attack Kwaame. Get a functioning brain! zing!
Let us see, you only post in Apple related threads, or whenever someone mentions anything to do with Apple in a non-apple related post. You defend Apple, spout inaccurate info when needed, and act in a general fanboy manner.
Keep it up, good work
@JS
Adobe has HTML5 export in Flash CS5. Although it is very limited, it is just the beginning.