MikeChambers
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Adobe product manager fingers Apple for death of Flash Player for mobile
Adobe's battles with Apple haven't exactly been a secret over the past couple of years, but the death of Flash Player for mobile has once again brought that drama to the fore. Mike Chambers, a lead product manager for Flash, took to his personal site today to shed some light on Adobe's rapid descent, pointing the finger squarely at Apple's refusal to adopt the player in its mobile OS. He had this to say: This one should be pretty apparent, but given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple's iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops... Just to be very clear on this. No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to be available on Apple's iOS anytime in the foreseeable future. That combined with the "strong support for HTML5 across modern devices," was apparently enough to drive the final nail into Flash's coffin. Among other things, Chambers cited the use of apps instead of browsers for media consumption and the complexity of the mobile market as further reasons for Adobe's decision. He went on to say that Adobe has a "long term commitment to the Flash Player on desktops," but concluded by encouraging Flash developers to diversify their skill sets. For the very lengthy full-form version of Chambers' explanation, hit the source link below, but we'd suggest grabbing a drink before you do so.
Adobe halts investment in iPhone-specific Flash dev tools, has another dig at Apple (update: Apple responds)
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."
