Adobe to End Development on Flash-to-iPhone Compiler in Wake of Apple License Change

[baryon]

BTW what is exactly that Flash can do that HTML 5 can't? Annoy people, crash browsers?

HTML5 doesn't have an application like Flash CS4 to create content without ever typing a single line of code, for example, making it easier to use for artists and people who don't want to code, but instead want to create stuff.

Animating with Flash is the easiest thing to do, you can do timeline-based animation, frame-by-frame animation and tweens without ever touching the Actions panel. And it's all vector based. How do you to that with HTML5? How do you make an animated cartoon easily with HTML5 today?

And Flash has never crashed any of my PCs, it has only crashed my Mac. So I wouldn't blame Flash for that!

Videos and websites that require coding and databases, on the other hand, are not ideal for Flash, but until now, there was no alternative for years. HTML5 will probably do a good job at replacing all that, but slowly, since I'm sure not everyone wants to pay for a new website right now.

At the moment there is nothing Flash can't do that HTML5 can do, only Flash does some things much less effectively if you have an old computer.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

PEOPLE JUST WANT THEIR HOT-SH*T iDEVICES.

They're more than willing to give up a few sites if it means more time to use their iDevices. No Flash on the iPhone either, and sales are through the roof. Flash is a non-issue. The draw and appeal of Apple's products have nullified it.

In the meantime HTML5 will spread and the consumer won't even notice what's happened. Apple will steer them to other sites which take full advantage of iDevices. The App Store can do the rest of the work in keeping consumer busy. Don't ever underestimate Apple products and the UIs that come with them. The internet also lives in apps.

No they don't...

What exactly would I do with **** overpriced iDevice that locks me into some swastika loving draconian little bubble and it doesnt even allow me to view half of the web online!?!?!

Sure I wouldn't refuse it if Steve gives it to me - thanks Steve!

But I wouldn't pay the guy a penny for such pile of crap!

 

[HyperZboy]

They work for me. The first link is just an incorrect url page not found error. Otherwise all three sites work fine.

Game says "Press A to start" but doesn't work.

If that's your example of THE WONDERS OF HTML 5, ALL I GOTTA SAY IS...

EPIC FAIL! LOL

 

[*LTD*]

Over 20 years ago Jean-Louis Gassee gave his final speech as an Apple employee; it was the MacWorld Keynote! His talk was entitled "Three Steps in a Love Affair". I only remember two of the three steps (and, perhaps, someone else who was there will remind me of the third step - please PM me and post it here).

Step 1 was "Ubiquitous Internet Access" - okay, we're almost there.

Step 2 was "User-Accessible Programming Language" - Apple sprung HyperCard on us and it was beautiful. Today we have its successor, "Revolution" (from runrev.com). They announced "revMobile" to permit mere mortals to develop apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, and Windows Mobile. However, the same problem of the "intermediate layer" essentially kills the ability of anyone to use this potentially wonderful tool to develop apps for iPhone OS4 (due to that frickin' rule).

The best apps will come from users who are not alpha geeks. Objective-C isn't part of any dialect we speak. Apple needs to license the revMobile technology and optimize it for iPhone OS4, then let users download it (or, heck, sell it! I'm ready to buy!).

Do Objective-C developers make excellent apps? Well, some do but most of the apps I see at the App Store are rated only two stars so what does that tell you?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/18/tech/main6409345.shtml

Jean-Louis Gassée’s iPad second impressions: ‘More than good enough for me’
Monday, April 19, 2010

"I’m 'stuck' in Paris (poor me), volcanic ash from Iceland has closed the airports. Stranded but not ignored. I have my iPad. In business meetings, in cafés and restaurants, the iPad is, as I reported two weeks ago, an all-around 'guy-and-chick magnet,'" Jean-Louis Gassée reports for CBS News. "Sit down, stroke the screen, and Parisians, not normally the outgoing sort, admire and strike up a conversation. Norway’s Prime Minister, stranded as well, used his iPad to govern remotely…très chic. I’ve never seen anything like this."

"I gave myself two weeks to form an opinion of the iPad. (And note well the my and opinion: I may let a fact sneak in here and there, but I intend to convey my personal impressions. As we say online: YMMV. You might come to a different conclusion.) I carried my brand new iPad everywhere, and I mean everywhere: From the smallest room in the house to the office, out to the coffee shop, into the 747 cabin and then on, to a magazine industry conference in Paris," Gassée reports. "I wanted to know if this would come back to the pail after a fortnight. Call me a skeptic, but I’ve spent too much time inside too many sausage factories to trust a demo, (which is a first impression.)"

Gassée reports, "The iPad isn’t perfect but, for me, it’s more than good enough, and extrapolating from the iPhone trajectory since 2007 we’ll see a steady string of improvements, especially if competitors such as HP and (the now-disliked) Google spur Apple and drive investment and creativity. A final word…for Bill Gates. In 2001, he predicted that within five years, the Tablet PC would be the most popular form of PC sold in America. The timing was off, but he might end up being right, even if he might not enjoy the fruits of his vision... The iPad might be the real thing, finally."

 

[iBug2]

SAFARI CRASHES MACS DAILY just from Javascript!

Steve Jobs needs to look within his own house before blaming FLASH.

It's just one of 2 problems on Macs.

Never had a single Safari 4 crash other than flash plugin. And I'm an avid crash reporter.

 

[DJ Dilbert]

SAFARI CRASHES MACS DAILY just from Javascript!

Steve Jobs needs to look within his own house before blaming FLASH.

It's just one of 2 problems on Macs.

Just curious...what is #2?

 

[coleridge78]

HTML5 doesn't have an application like Flash CS4 to create content without ever typing a single line of code, for example, making it easier to use for artists and people who don't want to code, but instead want to create stuff.

Agreed. The flip side of that is that your runtime, translation layer, or whatever is doing the work underneath better be really good, or you're going to end up with crap. That's part of the issue here.

And Flash has never crashed any of my PCs, it has only crashed my Mac. So I wouldn't blame Flash for that!

Hrm? Now you're out of your depth, with all due respect. They are two different codebases. Adobe can (and does) expend the effort for stability on one, and not the other.

 

[*LTD*]

No they don't...

Around 75 million people do. The numbers are increasing every quarter. Next-gen iPhone due in June.

Add to that all the iPad sales up until now, which of course will be THE blockbuster device over the next year. Sales of the device will be unprecedented. Bet on it.

Apple devices > Flash-based internet sites.

This is reality.

 

[awmazz]

This is some of the blindest Apple fanboy nonsense I've ever heard. Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never heard anyone say, "I'm so glad my iPad doesn't support Flash!" In fact, reviews I've read have only stated the contrary.

Then you're just reading reviews and not other peoples' comments. There have been multiple posts on this and the the other threads by people who actually use Flash blockers like clicktoflash to suppress Flash to improve their web experience.

And where are all these reviews you read? Quite likely on professional websites which have paid Flash advertising all over them. Are they really going to recommend in their reviews that viewing their websites without Flash is a good thing? At least for the time being?

Speakig of all te annoying ads which are invariably Flash. This actually won't change much once all the annoying ads become HTML5, except that it might not be possible to block them with an HTML5 blocker any more like you can do now with Flash.

 

[HyperZboy]

HTML5 doesn't have an application like Flash CS4 to create content without ever typing a single line of code, for example, making it easier to use for artists and people who don't want to code, but instead want to create stuff.

Animating with Flash is the easiest thing to do, you can do timeline-based animation, frame-by-frame animation and tweens without ever touching the Actions panel. And it's all vector based. How do you to that with HTML5? How do you make an animated cartoon easily with HTML5 today?

And Flash has never crashed any of my PCs, it has only crashed my Mac. So I wouldn't blame Flash for that!

Videos and websites that require coding and databases, on the other hand, are not ideal for Flash, but until now, there was no alternative for years. HTML5 will probably do a good job at replacing all that, but slowly, since I'm sure not everyone wants to pay for a new website right now.

At the moment there is nothing Flash can't do that HTML5 can do, only Flash does some things much less effectively if you have an old computer.

I don't even have problems with FLASH on my OLD AS DIRT Windows XP PC.

This is the only part where I take Apple's side.
Adobe needs to step up and fix FLASH on the MAC first.
It's embarrassing that FLASH works better on older PCs than newer Macs.

That much I think we can all agree with.

Why give Adobe access to the iPhone or iPad without fixing FLASH on the Mac FIRST?

But at the same time, it's clear Steve Jobs is in ALL-OUT WAR MODE and that's not good for consumers.

 

[DJ Dilbert]

Game says "Press A to start" but doesn't work.

If that's your example of THE WONDERS OF HTML 5, ALL I GOTTA SAY IS...

EPIC FAIL! LOL

I've been in agreement with you so far but you didn't read the first page. It says the A=Z, B=X, and C=C.

 

[Hal Itosis]

This is some of the blindest Apple fanboy nonsense I've ever heard. Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never heard anyone say, "I'm so glad my iPad doesn't doesn't support Flash!"

I'm so glad my iPad doesn't doesn't support Flash! [it's high time the world moves away from its reliance on Adobe for web/video technology.]

i'm not interested in a pissing match, as it's clear that you didn't read my post nor understand what Flash is or what it's actually capable of in competent hands.

But the problem is, way too many developers clearly aren't that "competent" or concerned with being capable. The vast majority of Flashy stuff out there (be it an iPhone app or a website) is crappy. And now that the iPhone platform is so popular, every amateur joe-6-pack programmer on the planet wants to be a Flash developer so they can crank out some fartsy Flash-filled crAppware and ride Apple's coat tails to easy $uccess.


__


Actually, this move by Adobe puts them and Apple on exactly the same page. Apple doesn't want app submissions designed via Flash Professional... and now that's guaranteed to be a reality. So I don't see what all the hollering is about (other than a few developers who may need to expand their craft in order to compete). Once the dust settles, the consumer (and the iPhone platform) will be the beneficiaries.

 

[HyperZboy]

Sure. Shockingly, other things can cause crashes too.

Personally, I currently spend ten hours a day developing web apps with JavaScript backed by (unfortunately twisted) combinations of five different common libraries. I still see less JS crashes in a month than I do in an hour of YouTubing or trying to play Flash games. Literally.

I've only had one occurrence, in my life, of JavaScript on a public, production site crashing my browser. I'm curious what sites you go to that it happens so often.

Tribune newspaper sites crash Safari often.

So maybe this only affects people in LA, Chicago, or a dozen other cities.

 

[KindredMAC]

It may die on Mac fairly quickly -- and we'd all be fine with that -- but the non-Mac crowd (which is fairly significant eh?) will keep it alive. If we could get more people moved over to we could kill MS and Adobe.

Kill Adobe?!?!? What? Are you ***** serious? Do you know ONE thing about the creative world?????

Is Adobe perfect? F NO! But is Apple perfect? Holy F NO!

I don't hear people get down on Intuit for Quicken or Turbo Tax, but good God people who aren't even creative professionals love to scream about how evil Adobe is and how apps like Pixelmator are better than Photoshop.

If you don't use any of the Adobe CS apps to earn a REAL paycheck that pays for your mortgage and only use it to interchange the heads of your drunken fool friends then you can shut the F up!

But back to Flash... It kills me how many people hate on Flash. It's obviously because of all the bad banner ads and long load pages. I am an Art Director who also creates Flash animations. However I will scrap an idea if my SWF needs more than 2 seconds to load and start from scratch trying to make sure that the user experience is fluid and non-intrusive.

For all those that hate the Flash banner ads, what about the HTML5 ads that are starting to appear over webpages and are almost impossible to get rid of. Just watch and see.... HTML5 developers will get sloppy just as dime store Flash designers did.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

And these same buggy apps are crashing the iPhone? Haven't seen much evidence of that. Haven't even heard any anecdotes. Failed argument on your part.

I guess I use more apps than you. Had one crash last night.

Well, most of them are judging by the playability and stability of most games I try these days. But seriously...

I was talking about general computing devices, not game environments, since that was the topic here. You're right. Games are a different question because they are their own environment. We all know that these days hardware is (sort-of, more-or-less) hardware. The differentiation in systems I was talking about is at the OS and framework layers. For example, an application built in Flash by your average Flash developer and then compiled for the iPhone is extremely likely to be non-standard in its controls and interactions, and not take advantage of software features available in iPhone OS but not Android (and vice versa, for that matter--if I were an Incredible owner I would avoid nearly any non-game application developed from a translation layer that allowed arbitrary interface).

Yeah, I get kind of uppity because I develop games on my free time. I was working on the iPhone/iPad, but had to put it on hold when all this middleware stuff cropped up. The software solutions I have been exploring are either totally custom (Unity, Torque) or have direct access Apple design conventions like spinning dials and buttons (Corona).

Do Objective-C developers make excellent apps? Well, some do but most of the apps I see at the App Store are rated only two stars so what does that tell you?

It tells me it's still up to the individual user/developer. A certain tool, or the exclusion of certain tools, do not make good apps by default.

 

[DJ Dilbert]

I don't even have problems with FLASH on my OLD AS DIRT Windows XP PC.

This is the only part where I take Apple's side.
Adobe needs to step up and fix FLASH on the MAC first.
It's embarrassing that FLASH works better on older PCs than newer Macs.

That much I think we can all agree with.

Why give Adobe access to the iPhone or iPad without fixing FLASH on the Mac FIRST?

But at the same time, it's clear Steve Jobs is in ALL-OUT WAR MODE and that's not good for consumers.

Exactly, and I think that is why Apple as a company supported Jobs' idea to ban Flash. To force Adobe to fix it. But if they do fix the problems, will the Company force Jobs to reconcile and allow it on their platform?

 

[ChazUK]

Google lends a helping hand: http://theflashblog.com/?p=1926

“Google believes that developers should have their choice of tools and technologies to create applications. By supporting Adobe AIR on Android we hope that millions of creative designers and developers will be able to express themselves more freely when they create applications for Android devices. More broadly, AIR will foster rapid and continuous innovation across the mobile ecosystem.”

I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to hear something like this. Google wants creative professionals to be able to target the Android platform and at the same time they are not trying to prevent those same professionals from targeting other platforms.

(OKay, not Flash but Adobe related).

 

[HyperZboy]

Just curious...what is #2?

I meant Javascript AND Flash as #1 and #2.

I actually don't use as much Flash content as my posts make me appear to.

Javascript seems to cause most of my crashes in Safari.

I have multiple Macs, so it's not like this is an isolated case and yes I report all my crashes.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

And now that the iPhone platform is so popular, every amateur joe-6-pack programmer on the planet wants to be a Flash developer so they can crank out some fartsy Flash-filled crAppware and ride Apple's coat tails to easy $uccess.

That already happened without Flash on iPhone OS. Flash doesn't make bad apps. People do. And some of them code directly in apple's approved methods.

 

[coleridge78]

Tribune newspaper sites crash Safari often.

So maybe this only affects people in LA, Chicago, or a dozen other cities.

I'm from Chicago. I've spent at least an hour on the Tribune site, including commenting through Topix, every day for the last 12 years (since Harry Caray died) that I wasn't camping or out of the country.

Never had a crash. Same story with the Baltimore Sun site, which is backed by the same Trib Co infrastructure (you can recognize their sites a mile away).

 

[HyperZboy]

I've been in agreement with you so far but you didn't read the first page. It says the A=Z, B=X, and C=C.

Oh, I was unaware it was a puzzle, my bad! HAHA!

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Kill Adobe?!?!? What? Are you ***** serious? Do you know ONE thing about the creative world?????

Is Adobe perfect? F NO! But is Apple perfect? Holy F NO!

I don't hear people get down on Intuit for Quicken or Turbo Tax, but good God people who aren't even creative professionals love to scream about how evil Adobe is and how apps like Pixelmator are better than Photoshop.

If you don't use any of the Adobe CS apps to earn a REAL paycheck that pays for your mortgage and only use it to interchange the heads of your drunken fool friends then you can shut the F up!

But back to Flash... It kills me how many people hate on Flash. It's obviously because of all the bad banner ads and long load pages. I am an Art Director who also creates Flash animations. However I will scrap an idea if my SWF needs more than 2 seconds to load and start from scratch trying to make sure that the user experience is fluid and non-intrusive.

For all those that hate the Flash banner ads, what about the HTML5 ads that are starting to appear over webpages and are almost impossible to get rid of. Just watch and see.... HTML5 developers will get sloppy just as dime store Flash designers did.

100% agreed

 

[Frobozz]

A little perspective here.

There are roughly 100 apps not written natively in Objective C, according to the post by Adobe.

There are around 189,281 active apps in the app store. Took a little Googling to figure out this number. Let's assume it's roughly correct.

So, roughly 0.05 % of the apps are currently affected. Obviously, more would become available at the CS5 tools became available. But this is not a current high priority issue. It's an issue of Adobe not liking reality for their growth strategy.

I don't blame them, but Flash is closed. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.

 

[RebootD]

Exactly, and I think that is why Apple as a company supported Jobs' idea to ban Flash. To force Adobe to fix it. But if they do fix the problems, will the Company force Jobs to reconcile and allow it on their platform?

But while Macs make up 45-50% of their software sales Macs still make up less than 10% of all home computers. If Apple is constantly at ends with Adobe why would they put millions of R&D into fixing Flash for 10% when they can focus on the other 90%?

 

[Marx55]

The closed ones are the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. That is the really big problem: Apple in this case.