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

[Mattie Num Nums]

I am not an Adobe hater however, I do understand Apples position. HOWEVER! I do wish the two would work together to get a common solution. HTML5 is not a solution because Flash is a framework. Having that Framework available for the iPhone OS would really give Apple the "Hey we can do everything the net has to offer" thumbs up from people. HTML5 will offer some great solutions for multimedia but again the thing people forget is Flash is more than just embedded ad's and videos, its a Framework that would be highly useful on the iPhone or mobile devices in general if developed correctly.

I think one issue too that is brought up is Flash seems to work great on certain Hardware models of Macs. I think Adobe and Apple need to stop acting like little kids and get together and do whats right for us, the customers. Lets face it, Adobe is going away anytime soon.

 

[hwhalers]

It's time for Adobe to adapt or watch Flash die.

Flash is already dead, Adobe's just pulling a Weekend at Bernie's at this point.

 

[204353]

Maybe if Adobe hadn't been so lazy and improved Flash for Mac OS X (speed-wise and in terms of security and reliability) their relationship with Apple wouldn't be so bad.

It still drives me nuts when my MacBook Pro's fans rev up after watching a couple of YouTube vids! I can't wait until YouTube has full HTML5 mode across the board.

 

[feszty]

Wrong

By not allowing Flash developers to port to Objective-C for the App Store discourages Flash development in the first place.

Both lack of the mobile Flash plug-in or the inability to port from Flash for mobile devices (or at least the predominant smartphone platform) reduces the viability of Flash's future as a development environment.

Flash is in the rear view mirror now.

But I don't appreciate the fact that Steve's war on flash causes major headache for me when I try to browse the Web on my iPhone or iPad. I paid good money for these products and I want to be able to visit all the web, not only the portion the Führer approves of.

 

[kdarling]

Apple is most certainly thinking of their users. Users vote with their dollars, and users have voted for Apple devices that DO NOT support Flash.

We could only say that if Apple sold devices both with and without Flash... and more people bought the latter.

Heck, people buy Macs that work with Flash all the time. They haven't gone out instead and found a computer that can't.

What I think you mean is, it hasn't stopped many people from buying an iPhone. But that doesn't mean Apple wouldn't sell even more with Flash.

 

[PandaOnslaught]

How the hell is HTML5 being brought up with title specifically says "Flash to iPhone compiler"????? What are you guys even talking about??

its the "alternative" so people are raging hard about how its going to make everything better, and that we don't need flash

 

[ct2k7]

Flash will never die.

For people who are talking about Flash vs HTML5 - I don't know why you are but I've just corrected a client who was new to HTML5. HTML5 will outdo Flash in the media arena. I mean - try making animations and games with HTML5. It just doesn't work. What I'm also doing is shifting most of the server side work to the client - try that with HTML5, doesn't work.

With regards to Flash compiler for iPhone, I am not entirely sure about this issue, becuase I can't see where it could be used, maybe gaming?

 

[ryanide]

Good BYE FLASH!!!

I can't wait to see Flash DIE!!! I have hated it from the beginning... nothing but a big pain in the a$$.

 

[sfh]

For myself, I am more concerned about this spat going even further. Could someday Photoshop and other CS components be Windows-only if things get out of hand?

that would be my concern... adobe products have made me lots of money.... but on the other hand adobe has gotten really lazy when it comes to cleaning up their code to make their programs work faster and have less bugs.

We pay a high price for their products (sometimes more than the machine we run them on) they should do everything they can to make them run flawlessly.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Flash is already dead, Adobe's just pulling a Weekend at Bernie's at this point.

To be fair, I would say Adobe doesn't know that Bernie is dead yet.

How the hell is HTML5 being brought up with title specifically says "Flash to iPhone compiler"????? What are you guys even talking about??

The people who don't understand the real issue just fall in lock step with Steve, I guess.

 

[simulacra]

I'm mostly worried that the play on Apples part will cause a fallout of developers submitting to the appstore, sue it might only be idiotic apps, but flash conversion isn't the only thing Apple has banned.

What if devs started saying "why should we use xcode do develop this, let's use our old windows machines and develop for the android-store instead".
We already got a major publisher that will have to fins new ways to develop their magazines for the iPad since their platform uses Adobe Air...

I'm not worried that Adobe will pull CS5 of OSX since it's a fair bit of market share, dont even think that Apple and Adobe dislike eachother all that much, but what's the point in adding gasoline to the embers?

 

[powers74]

vs

Apple: 3

Adobe: 0

 

[shiseiryu1]

I agree

You're right, we should go back to the 90's and use tables for layout and font tags instead of CSS. Kidding. Development happens either way. The Internet, like all development platforms will continue to evolve. We are faced with a choice right now, evolve with Flash and fragment the internet, or evolve to more open standards. Apple is throwing their weight behind open standards. Adobe is screaming and yelling because they want to control the Internet. Reminds me of Active X, for that reason alone I support Apple and open standards.

I think you're totally right about this...hardly anyone was talking about HTML5 until Apple decided to ban Flash. Seems to me that this is a push to get the standard formalized and implemented on browsers everywhere.

Once HTML5 is finalized Adobe can still keep developing their Flash software...they'll just need to make a "Export to HTML5" option on the menu. There are a lot of developers that like Flash so Adobe can do a win-win by keeping people buying their development package and supporting open source at the same time.

 

[sfh]

its the "alternative" so people are raging hard about how its going to make everything better, and that we don't need flash

HTML5 Still has nothing to do with this.... as it is not an "alternative" for what they are talking about.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Apple: 3

Adobe: 0

Users: -3

 

[Winni]

Apple is most certainly thinking of their users. Users vote with their dollars, and users have voted for Apple devices that DO NOT support Flash. Content providers want users to get their content. Now that Apple users have chosen no flash, content providers have to decide to alienate Apple customers or move away from Flash. I would bet a lot of money the latter happens. In the end, the users cares about the content, not how it is provided.

Most iProduct users that I know are extremely pissed that their devices don't display Flash - or Java - content. It actually makes the platform less versatile, less usable and less valuable and the users feel restricted and limited in their possibilities.

Actually, your argument is a negation of the reality. Content -is- provided in Flash format, many online businesses still require Java capabilities in your browser and Apple is giving its customers neither. Their devices lack the necessary compatibility with several of today's de facto standards. And on top of that, Apple even CENSORS the content on their devices.

Now what will the users do? They will switch to a compatible platform that provides it all and that without any censorship: Enter Android. The rapidly growing market share of Android devices speaks volumes about what the users are choosing.

Apple are shooting themselves in their own foot with their ridiculous walled garden policies. Again. But Steve Jobs is notorious for doing this since the 1980s, so there's nothing new here, really. He condemned the Mac to be a niche system, and now he also condemns his iProducts to be niche systems by making the same mistakes again.

Steve Jobs didn't learn any lessons from the desktop war against the IBM PC clones and Microsoft and he obviously never put any thought into the question why Apple had lost this war. Today the battle field has changed to mobile platforms, but in its essence it is still the same war: A closed platform owned by one single entity against an open platform shared and used by the entire rest of the industry. Now it's no longer the Mac against DOS and Winodws PCs, this time it is the closed iPhone OS and AppStore platform against the open Android platform. Everybody can build Android devices, and everybody can write software for Android with whatever tool and language pleases him.

The open platforms have always won the battles against closed platforms. There is zero reason to believe that this time the closed platform will prevail.

It actually can be reduced to this: People want the Freedom of choice. And that's the one thing you cannot get from Apple.

 

[aristotle]

This has nothing specific to do with Flash versus HTML5. It has everything to do with the flash compiler producing an executable that stores everything in the text area of the executable which means that all those graphics and sounds are loaded into memory at startup time of the game or app rather than as needed from the disk. There are probably other issues with the EXE which make it not compatible with either multitasking or fast task switching.

If you have Objective C code, you can fairly easily add some code to make it compatible but that is not the case with something like Adobe's tool. Also, Apple cannot help you debug or optimize the performance of your app because you did not actually write it, the tool wrote it.

If you want to publish on the iTunes App store, learn to program in a real language like C/C++ and Objective C.

This is really no different than developing for Windows Mobile. While MSFT might not explicitly ban other languages, they are not going to go out of their way to help you if you are using an unsupported language from another company. If you want to develop on windows platforms, MSFT pushes people to .NET and Silverlight.

 

[fabian9]

I'm fed up of reading all these uninformed opinions about why Flash is bad - I've been using Flash for over 10 years primarily to produce eLearning materials and it is the best solution available for this.

Flash is not just video content.

And you shouldn't condemn solutions based on how some people use them - ie just because you don't like Flash adverts doesn't make all Flash bad.

I don't think anybody ever said that Flash is just for video content. Same as HTML5 isn't just for video content...

Do you have any examples that can not be done in HTML5 that can be done in Flash? Or is the problem that you've gotten so used to writing your eLearning modules in flash that you don't want to learn how to use a superior technology to do the same thing? Just imagine how many more people you could reach with your eLearning modules if they could use them on the road on their iPhones, iPads and iPods!

Fabian

 

[PandaOnslaught]

HTML5 Still has nothing to do with this.... as it is not an "alternative" for what they are talking about.

Hence the rolleyes gesture

 

[qbert]

Suckers. Apple is pulling one over on us all, big time.

At least with Flash, you have click-to-flash. With hmtl5, it'll be all-or-nothing and if you want the best battery life and performance, you'll need to buy the latest hardware.

Go to this html5 demo of simple controls and watch your CPU heat up.

http://demo.sproutcore.com/sample_controls/

I imagine a RIA or web game built using HTML5 would make you computer simply explode!...

PS. Despite the topic header, this really is all about Apple trying to kill Flash in order to lock in hardware sales.

 

[HLdan]

How has Adobe 'screwed' OS X users? How is the productivity suite two years behind? If you are referring to the 32-64 bit difference, then blame Apple. Apple promised, then pulled, support for 64-bit Carbon, forcing Adobe to wait until a Cocoa written suite could be developed (e.g. CS5).

You obviously haven't been a Mac user very long. I go back since Mac OS 8.5. This crap with Adobe mistreating Apple's customers has been going along for many years. Without Apple there would be NO ADOBE. I'm stating that as FACT, because that's exactly what Adobe stated at WWDC a few short years back.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

I'm mostly worried that the play on Apples part will cause a fallout of developers submitting to the appstore, sue it might only be idiotic apps, but flash conversion isn't the only thing Apple has banned.

True, but Apple's anti-Flash iPhone compiler policies don't prevent bad apps or games. As much as some programmers on these boards make fun of flash developers as "script kiddies" - knowing objective-C inside and out doesn't give a game good graphics or gameplay any more than a Flash published game does.

 

[zimv20]

i'm a developer...

....and have been for many years.

currently, I develop in Adobe Flex. Flex compiles down to an executable that runs in a sandbox called Flash. apps written for this sandbox can be deployed to a browser (with a Flash plugin) or to the desktop (via Adobe's AIR).

lots of people write crap for this sandbox. I think that's what most people are reacting to.

it's possible to write enterprise-level apps for the Flash platform. i know, because i'm doing it. i've also written enterprise apps in C++ and Java (and some pretty large systems in C). Flash has some unique strengths, easy deployment among them.

these enterprise apps look like desktop apps, except they can run in the browser. and the Flash runtime is highly optimized; perceived performance issues are either the result of the app developer or some issues between the runtime and the browser.

Flash should not simply "go away". That belief comes from a position of ignorance. the platform allows for write-once-run-anywhere, easy deployment, easy integration with other technologies, and a lot of power in the UI. Plus, Adobe was kind enough to develop a technology to allow Flash apps to target multiple mobile devices, through a simple compile. As a developer, that appeals to me.

I hope this post was informative.

 

[zimv20]

Flash is only really preferred by developers who don't know anything else.

please tell me more about what I don't know.

 

[miketcool]

Dollars-to-donuts Apple already has alternatives in development. They have the talent and the resources for it. Look what they did to Aperture and FCP. No problem.

There are still far more Lightroom users out there because Apple has not fulfilled the wants of photographers. Faces and Places are cute for iPhoto users, but I still do not have a decent layout and publishing interface on Aperture. Lightroom is lightyears ahead, and I can only imagine what Apple's Photoshop or Illustrator equivalent would be like.

That being said, that is vaporware at this point. I don't care if Apple has a death star superlaser in the works. Until it's scripted, tested, published and accepted, it's all a stupid argument.

Call on Adobe for punishing me if and when they decide Apple isn't for them, but if Apple makes it a habit of offending, and harming their partners, don't see this pattern to stop. I like the 3rd party support, wasn't that what everyone was griping about a few years back, the lack of. Then Mac OS X stepped up and got developers to come. Now they are pushing for totalitarian control and a monopoly. Blame Adobe, but Apple is pushing their luck, great products or not.