Adobe to Resume Work on Flash-to-iPhone Compiler

[charlituna]

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/webers-on-the-grill/id321412323?mt=8

Ok here is an example of an app that will without a doubt run flawless if it were made with the Flash compiler. This app is not made with Flash but I am using this as an example of the totally lame native xcode apps that are out there right now.

Not every app has to be full of bells and whistles. Especially if its a lifestyle app. The information is the point.

And I've seen Flash used to make some very similar crap. So don't lay the blame on the code

The beauty of it however is that a smaller company doesn't have to pay somebody $10,000.00 to build them a stupid app like this.

it doesn't cost that much for a programmer who rights in native code either.

With the cost of Adobe software, the bigger risk for a smaller company is actually using Flash

If some of you really want to know how to tell which apps are made with Flash then you have to start to ask yourself why you are freaking out so much.

Probably has something to do with the issue that all sales are final. No one wants to drop a few bucks on an app that has a greater than chance to freeze, crash, brick your device, or break every time Apple updates iOS

 

[KnightWRX]

Probably has something to do with the issue that all sales are final. No one wants to drop a few bucks on an app that has a greater than chance to freeze, crash, brick your device, or break every time Apple updates iOS

And that has to do with the language in which it written... how exactly ?

And brick your device... how exactly is it someone other than Apple's fault if that happens ? Apps don't have low level enough access to the OS to even do that.

Are you making stuff up ?

Again, if you can't tell the language it was written in, it's a good indication that you shouldn't care.

 

[charlituna]

The flash plug in for OSX has some problem which I think a lot of it traces back to Apple not Abobe.

All of the problems with things Adobe and MacOS are due to the known detail that Adobe doesn't write for Mac OS. they write for Windows and once it is all pretty and debugged, they toss a porting layer on top of it to make it work on Mac.

This is why Jobs called them lazy a few months back. Because they refuse to write native Mac apps for any of their stuff

Flash to iphone Compiler just takes flash code and converts it to native iPhone code.

unless they changed something after the whole banning that is not what it does. It does the same trick Adobe pulled with their Mac desktop apps. Takes something written in another language (this time Flash) and tops a layer of 'porting' code on it. Which is why it was banned.

IF it had been a translator folks probably could have deleted any metadata that gave up that source and gotten in despite the whole 'no 3rd party tools' issue

 

[Geir]

How is this different from some of the crappy native apps? I'm waiting for the first million dollar Flash iPhone app to finally quite all you Flash complainers! It will happen!

Of course there will be good games developed with Flash. But there's what? 4.5 (I read somewhere) million Flash developers out there and maybe 4-5% of them are good at it. So now everyone and their grandma's will be adding their lame apps in the App Store. I'm of course selfish when I say I really didn't want that. I remember back in the days when everybody started website companies, companies like "PointDexter's home computer support & webdesign". People who had no knowledge beyond Frontpage and Windows Paint.
It sucks for us that have invested a lot of time learning the iPhone API's and Objective-C. For real performance you would still use Objective-C/C/C++, but when the Pointdexter's starts to roll out lame apps for practically nothing then rapid development is more important than the end performance. Thats just the way it is, unfortunatly.
And by the way, I hate AS3

 

[charlituna]

All of the problems with things Adobe and MacOS are due to the known detail that Adobe doesn't write for Mac OS. they write for Windows and once it is all pretty and debugged, they toss a porting layer on top of it to make it work on Mac.

This is why Jobs called them lazy a few months back. Because they refuse to write native Mac apps for any of their stuff



unless they changed something after the whole banning that is not what it does. It does the same trick Adobe pulled with their Mac desktop apps. Takes something written in another language (this time Flash) and tops a layer of 'porting' code on it. Which is why it was banned.

IF it had been a translator folks probably could have deleted any metadata that gave up that source and gotten in despite the whole 'no 3rd party tools' issue

And that has to do with the language in which it written... how exactly ?

You are correct. You can have crap that was written in native code.

However there are three additional issues with the whole Flash Port issue. At least as it stands from how they were doing it last winter

1. Each layer of new language you add onto an app increases the risk of poor code being in the mix. It might work, but it might not work the best way for a low power situation where every line becomes important.

2. Each layer brings up issues if one or more layers are changed (via updates), changing the translations.

3. Each layer increases the difficulty of evaluating if the app is actually well functioning or not. Which means that it is possible they will evaluate for only the current hardware and, if there is a means, bar these apps from older even less powerful hardware. Or make it a major case of buyer beware like they originally did with iOS 4 on the 3g phones and 2nd gen touches

And brick your device... how exactly is it someone other than Apple's fault if that happens ?

If an app freezes your device to the point that it won't unfreeze without a full restore or sends it into recovery mode, that's a brick. And yes it happens with apps and yes it is often due to bad app coding. Which makes it the developers fault.

Again, if you can't tell the language it was written in, it's a good indication that you shouldn't care.

that statement should be 'if it is a good and stable app, you shouldn't care what language it was written in'. And you are correct. But right now a lot of more knowledgeable types are very gun shy about the quality that can come out of this complier because they know the risks. Which is why they would rather some warning. At least if this complier is going to be the same layer game from back in January. And I can't blame them. I know I'll be checking out developers for clues about their methods even more from now on

 

[matthewjacob]

I won awards for Flash stuff many moons ago, it was frustratingly craptacular back in the day and clunky but did what it had to do, but it's time is past. It's not ADA compliant.

I'm assuming you're talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act? I have never heard of a programming language or programming environment being ADA complaint. I can't even begin to imagine what you're talking about.

 

[matthewjacob]

Flash can be used only by 5% of Android users:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

Your link shows Android 2.2 at 28.7%. Otherwise I seen no reference to Flash or this 5% figure.

 

[matthewjacob]

It is hard for the user to tell because all that happens is you miss click and the user blames the phone not the App.

I don't think so. Everyone can tell when an app doesn't work as expected. Well programmed apps work well and broken apps rarely make it into the store. When Apple overlooks a broken app the app gets bad reviews, but nobody blames the phone.

And what is "miss click" and what does that have to do with Flash as an iOS development tool?

Its why touch screen phones never took off before the iPhone - using a styles was the only solution to getting accurate interface

What is a "styles"? You mean a stylus? HTC made touch phones in Japan and Korea that were hugely popular about 4 years before iPhone.

 

[GamecockMac]

Choosing Flash on your phone does not have any chance of resulting in death or injury, like your analogy to shifting a car from drive to park can.

Really? What if you're surfing on your Android phone and a Flash-ridden site brings your phone to a crashing halt. Now what if as that happens, there is an emergency that requires an immediate 911 call? Hope those precious extra seconds it takes to force quit the browser/reboot your phone don't make a difference in saving someone's life. But hey, better to have the "choice" and risk that possibility, right?

 

[weespeed]

Really? What if you're surfing on your Android phone and a Flash-ridden site brings your phone to a crashing halt. Now what if as that happens, there is an emergency that requires an immediate 911 call? Hope those precious extra seconds it takes to force quit the browser/reboot your phone don't make a difference in saving someone's life. But hey, better to have the "choice" and risk that possibility, right?

What happens if you touch the spot on a 911 call and drop your signal?? Or what if you're on a 911 call and your face mutes the call or hangs up?? Or??

 

[KnightWRX]

If an app freezes your device to the point that it won't unfreeze without a full restore or sends it into recovery mode, that's a brick. And yes it happens with apps and yes it is often due to bad app coding. Which makes it the developers fault.

No, just no. Seriously, you are just making stuff up. Bricking, first and foremost, means the phone is bricked. Dead. Unrestorable. Throw it in the garbage or use it to prop up some books.

Second, an app can't "freeze" your phone to the point a reboot won't fix it. Second, an app can't "freeze" your phone to the point of requiring a reboot. Apps on iPhone run in jails. They can't affect anything but themselves and their own footprint.

If an app does anything to your phone other than bring it back to the home screen without notice, it's Apple's fault. An OS, a well written one, does not go down because of a misbehaving user space application.

Really? What if you're surfing on your Android phone and a Flash-ridden site brings your phone to a crashing halt. Now what if as that happens, there is an emergency that requires an immediate 911 call? Hope those precious extra seconds it takes to force quit the browser/reboot your phone don't make a difference in saving someone's life. But hey, better to have the "choice" and risk that possibility, right?

Again, car from drive to park = bad each and everytime. Have you ever even done that in a car ? Seriously...

When your scenario actually happens in real life, call me so I can start caring. Your analogy was plain bad, it still is. Making stuff up doesn't make it better.

Your link shows Android 2.2 at 28.7%. Otherwise I seen no reference to Flash or this 5% figure.

In his defense, the figures were updated after he posted the link.

 

[matthewjacob]

What happens if you touch the spot on a 911 call and drop your signal?? Or what if you're on a 911 call and your face mutes the call or hangs up?? Or??

So very true.

 

[gigi1701]

I'm assuming you're talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act? I have never heard of a programming language or programming environment being ADA complaint. I can't even begin to imagine what you're talking about.

Html, when done right, is. That is a strong point of html5 replacing a lot of what Flash does in a web browser. It is a big deal in certain circles. Goodwill Industries where my husband works was issued a memo that was telling the head offices to consider re-coding their websites in html5, one of the big reason was the accessibility of it to users with disabilities. Each region has its own website so each office is responsible for their own site. Some people use screen readers so all images have "alt tags" so the reader can tell the person what the image is. This is nothing new, been around for a very long time in the non-Flash web world. Html isn't as intensive of a programming language as say, javascript, but is is still coding none the less.

As for Apps, I am not sure as I do web code not app code, at least not yet.

 

[skitzogreg]

I'm assuming you're talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act? I have never heard of a programming language or programming environment being ADA complaint. I can't even begin to imagine what you're talking about.

I'm in complete agreement. ADA for programming. Interesting.

 

[firewood]

I'm assuming you're talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act? I have never heard of a programming language or programming environment being ADA complaint. I can't even begin to imagine what you're talking about.

I've met several professional programmers who are completely blind, so although I'm not sure about legal compliance, there are programming and software environments that are at least usefully compliant.

 

[firewood]

You can have crap that was written in native code.

All these languages are Turing complete, which means given enough development effort, memory, performance, time, and battery power, any of these languages can produce any app the same as the others.

However we certainly don't have infinite memory, time and battery size. That means that languages which add layers of inefficiency will not only make the cr*p into worse cr*p, but will turn barely marginal apps into outright cr*p, thus very likely resulting in a higher percentage cr*p.

BTW, native code would be ARM assembly language, not C, but since Objective C offers on the order of 100X improvement in development time for a few percent decrease in performance for most typical apps, over coding in ASM, Apple felt that it was worth the trade-off. Flash won't offer over 10X improvement in dev time, and the decrease in performance can be magnitudes larger than a few percent.

 

[Zc456]

So, if I were to design and write an application on Flash that lived up to Apple's stupid guidelines, would it still be poor quality?

 

[firewood]

So, if I were to design and write an application on Flash that lived up to Apple's stupid guidelines, would it still be poor quality?

Apple's guidelines don't guarantee quality (at least IMO). If your app design started out of poor quality, using the Flash tools (and the Objective C tools) won't magically make it any better.

Flash tools may make your app bigger and slower. If your basic design is memory efficient and fast to start out with, it may survive what the dev tools add.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

All these languages are Turing complete, which means given enough development effort, memory, performance, time, and battery power, any of these languages can produce any app the same as the others.

However we certainly don't have infinite memory, time and battery size. That means that languages which add layers of inefficiency will not only make the cr*p into worse cr*p, but will turn barely marginal apps into outright cr*p, thus very likely resulting in a higher percentage cr*p.

BTW, native code would be ARM assembly language, not C, but since Objective C offers on the order of 100X improvement in development time for a few percent decrease in performance for most typical apps, over coding in ASM, Apple felt that it was worth the trade-off. Flash won't offer over 10X improvement in dev time, and the decrease in performance can be magnitudes larger than a few percent.

You need to come up where you got that BS that flash would not improve dev time that much over assembly. I will call complete at utter BS on it.

Flash if coding if anything will greatly decrease dev time for flash coders. Reason being that they know how to code in flash and good at coding in flash. They may not know C or Object C that well so time would greatly be increase in writing anything thing if they could even do it.


over all I will say this thread is so full of complete BS of "flash sucks" from people who know next to nothing about coding or understand a lick of it. I am willing to bet good money that vast majority of people hardly know anything but the basics about programing. I could give you the first assignment from my Java 1 class and most of you could not have any hope of writing something that worked or even have a clue how to write it.

 

[vvebsta]

More likely their hand was forced by a desire to use actually good systems like the Unreal Engine (used for Epic Citadel) and knew they would have hell to pay if they actually singled out a particular tech. So whether they like it or not, they had to open the doors to everyone.

my thoughts exactly

My guess is that, if this complier lives up to Jobs fears, the apps will get so many 'this is crap' reviews that they will crash and burn. The developers that actually care about quality will start over from scratch and the rest will just die off. Providing of course that they actually survive the review process and don't get rejected for quality issues

isn't this the whole point of the reviews anyway? let the people decide!

 

[Heilage]

I'm not a big fan of Flash in general, on any platform. I don't think it's the optimal tool for most things it's being used for.

That being said, I also think it should boil down to choice. Jobs has a right to tell Adobe and Flash to sod off, but he remains an idiot for doing so. If Adobe are unable to compile Flash (in this case, compile it to iPhone) in a satisfactory way, it will lose popularity on it's own and die as a mobile platform. And if they shape up and make it good, then excellent. Everyone wins.

 

[GamecockMac]

Again, car from drive to park = bad each and everytime. Have you ever even done that in a car ? Seriously...

When your scenario actually happens in real life, call me so I can start caring. Your analogy was plain bad, it still is. Making stuff up doesn't make it better.

Kind of like you making stuff up to push your weak attempts at argument. I said shifting a car from Park to Drive without putting one's foot on the brake. Not always bad each and everytime, but potentially dangerous, just like having a cellphone mired in Flash molasses at a critical time, which you'd have to have zero imagination to think could never happen. When you can prove that my scenario has actually never happened in real life, call me and I'll admit that you might possibly possess the first semblance of a clue. Until then, keep drinking the haterade...

 

[pgflmac]

Video

I do not care one way or the other if I can get flash apps for iPad, but the device would be a lot more useful if I could watch flash video (espn) and silverlight (AFL). Not sure why Apple could not permit video vs. apps.