Adobe Updates Flash Builder and Flex to Support Building iOS Applications

[MacAddict1978]

Have a look at this and tell me what's ordinary about it:

http://machinarium.net

That game is made with Flash, it runs on OS X (and can even be purchased in the Mac AppStore), Linux and Windows and if Steve Jobs would listen to reason, stuff like this could also run just as easily on your fancy little iGadgets. At least now, thanks to Adobe and not thanks to Apple, there is a way for developers and designers to also port their great work to your crippled iPads and iPhones.

By the way, Flash 10.3 runs extraordinarily well on the Samsung Galaxy S2. I don't know why His Steveness is brainwashing everybody to believe that Flash performs poorly on phones. But then again, the S2 runs with an OS that was NOT designed to restrict its users and it also has a fully featured web browser.

While your post is totally off topic (since this wasn't a thread about Flash Player), I do have this to say.

Flash runs "extraordinarily well"? No, it's run better than it has on other devices so far. Have you read reviews for that device? There's still content that it chokes on, games that can't play well, etc. It's an improvement. One of the best experiences on a phone, but still marred. Battery drains are better, but it still drains battery life fast. (Much faster than HTML5 content) Only a few phones have been released that I've seen reviews that gave flash performance anything near a favorable spin, and I read them all, for every carrier. Adobe finally has some fire under their arses and they're actually trying to develop again for a change. Apple probably gave Adobe the kick in the pants they needed because it put them in a line of fire all over, not just from Apple. The last Version of flash for the Mac was a HUGE improvement performance wise, and I don't think they'd have put the effort into had it not been for the negative attention. It now a question of if they can innovate improvements faster than people are finding alternative technologies.

And you compared a flash game running on desk top os-es to mobile ones? Our Macs run flash just fine thank you. I despise when people throw a bunch of junk into a conversation that has no baring on the subject, which btw, isn't about flash player performance, but using Adobe's tools to port apps to various platforms.

The only thing I will credit you with is that Apple should let us be adults and decide if we want to install Flash on an IOS device, and not ban it like it's a narcotic or pornography. Personally, I haven't been at all bothered without it. Flash for Honeycomb has been the most stable, and functional mobile release so far, but Honeycomb is spared a lot of the fragmentation that plagued the mobile handsets. Google took a cue from from Steve Jobs with their tablet OS and locked it down a bit.

90% (from my own experience, not stating a fact) of the Apps I see people have are simple apps that a port wouldn't offer a bad experience with. Something like the USA Today app that basically is just a shell that drops a web feed doesn't need a lot of intricacy behind it. Now say something like The Sims, a game with a lot of dynamics, would fare better being more native. I think developers are capable of figuring out how they need to build their apps to make them efficient. There will always be crap apps... but not because of the tools, because the developers just want to throw as many 99 cent fart and gimmick apps out there to snag a buck and move on to the next. Lazy developers.

 

[chaosbunny]

Hence, Apple's argument the first time. Apps wll be "ordinary" leading users to feel that it is iOS that is simply "ordinary."

Well, iOS is pretty ordinary, I didn't need any apps to figure that out.

 

[racketeer71]

I'm just hoping this won't be a complete mess like Adobe's publishing tools where you download 500 mb pictures instead of text. Might as well just scan the printed magazine while they're at it.

Ah, like iWeb?

 

[NAG]

Ah, like iWeb?

Didn't say Adobe had a monopoly on junk and bloat. They just happen to be highly represented in the online, iPad-publishing marketplace. iWeb is not represented there at all, last time I checked. But hey, Ford trucks really suck compared to Dodge so I guess you have a point.

 

[FloatingBones]

This isn't a discussion about the Flash plugin, it's a discussion about Flash Builder.

You think they know the difference?

As far as I'm concerned, it really is the same thing.

If Flash really is the Alpha and Omega of the user experience, then users would be clamoring for Flash apps -- the same Flash apps -- on all platforms. All Flash applications would function correctly on all browsers on all computers and all portable devices. iOS and Android Flash Apps built with this new Flash Builder would function the same way, too. We would all be in Flash Nirvanna: nobody would even think of not using these tools for building their apps.

If the lack of Flash has kept the owners of the 200M+ iOS devices from the "full web experience", we now have an answer. Those award-winning Flash apps can now be ported in their full glory to iOS. They can now rapidly climb to best-selling status in all categories. If they're still buying ads, RIMM will have to update the narrative on their ad with the Queen soundtrack.

Dagless: the behavior of Flash apps in browsers has always been idiosyncratic. In my browser, certain keyboard shortcuts cease to work. I can't search for certain text within the Flash app (unless the developer rolls their own text-search functionality in their app, which would also be idiosyncratic). I always know I'm in a Flash app, and I never feel comfortable when there. When free Flash apps become available on the App Store, I'll try some. I fully expect that their behavior will not have the same feel as other iOS apps, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.

Flash on the web as a whole would have died in the long run. I am happy to see Apple accelerate the process by excluding Flash from their iOS browser. And I do have sympathy for the developers who really believed that it was the Alpha and Omega of the web.

 

[cube]

Excellent.

Objective C is the past.

But I would still prefer Java for iPhone.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

Here is good example of iOS app done using Flash / Flex:

http://vimeo.com/24168128

Adobe rox and Apple sux

 

[WestonHarvey1]

Excellent.

Objective C is the past.

But I would still prefer Java for iPhone.

... so ActionScript is the future?!

 

[cube]

... so ActionScript is the future?!

Java is the present.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

Java is the present.

There's hardly any meaningful differences anymore. Anyone can transition between Obj C 2.0 and Java. The real complexity in porting apps is the UI. Java doesn't solve that problem.

There's nothing that replaces Interface Builder, and certainly nothing comes close to the new XCode 4 storyboards. What's the point of going to Java if your workflow is crippled?

 

[cube]

There's hardly any meaningful differences anymore. Anyone can transition between Obj C 2.0 and Java. The real complexity in porting apps is the UI. Java doesn't solve that problem.

There's nothing that replaces Interface Builder, and certainly nothing comes close to the new XCode 4 storyboards. What's the point of going to Java if your workflow is crippled?

Non-portable platforms suck. Maybe there's still no Java for iOS because the idea would be to go JavaFX 2.0

 

[WestonHarvey1]

Non-portable platforms suck. Maybe there's still no Java for iOS because the idea would be to go JavaFX 2.0

The suckage of non-portability isn't a major issue, considering how dominant the iOS application platform is.

Apps custom designed for their native platform are always better than cross platform frameworks. They just have better fit and finish - there's no way to get around the hard work that needs to be done to make an app a good citizen.

Flex is like Swing.

 

[cube]

The suckage of non-portability isn't a major issue, considering how dominant the iOS application platform is.

Apps custom designed for their native platform are always better than cross platform frameworks. They just have better fit and finish - there's no way to get around the hard work that needs to be done to make an app a good citizen.

Flex is like Swing.

Like Android were nothing.

You develop the application once, fine tune for each OS.

Developing the same application multiple times is out of the question.

 

[AidenShaw]

of course - because he's running Windows 7

So he is on an Apple laptop with a nice iron man and android sticker to hide the Apple logo.

I know several Adobe engineers, and if they work on cross-platform apps they'll have Apples - since you can legally run Windows on an Apple, but you can't run Apple OSX on a Dell, Lenovo or HP.

At least the ones that I know spend most of their time running Windows because of the better development environment, and boot into Apple OSX occasionally to build and test on Apple OSX.

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

Like Android were nothing.

You develop the application once, fine tune for each OS.

Developing the same application multiple times is out of the question.

exactly... this is the same as how it is for say, video game consoles. Cross platform games still can be great, and fine tuned for each respective console. If a dev wants to truly harness the features or power of one specific console, they are able to do that as well. Now they are able to do the same things with iOS, Android, and BB apps.

 

[FloatingBones]

Sounds like Adobe has spared no expense to make 10.3 suck less. "His Steveness" has no incentive to wait several major releases out for Adobe to 'get it right'. I will say that on XP, I see my browser complain regularly about the Flash plugin crashing. I for one can't wait to enjoy that experience on my iPad 2.

Hear, hear. Even if this version of Flash works absolutely perfectly on all mobile devices, it would have been a disaster to muddle through all this time with broken Flash on iOS devices.

@Winni didn't say what percentage of Flash apps run correctly on his Samsung device.

 

[firewood]

Good news for consumers. If a dev is more comfortable creating their app with another tool or what have you, they should be allowed to use that tool to create their app and sell it on the App Store.

Apple learned long ago that what's "more comfortable" for the developer does not cause the creation of the best apps for the consumer, on average. If that wasn't true, then Windows Mobile apps would be outselling the iPhone (and Android) apps by a huge margin. Are they?

Non-portable platforms suck.

Talk to any cross-platform mobile developer. Java mobile apps are not portable.

The effort to port an app using this "portable platform" between device platforms, and ending up with an app that looks and feels competitive, is not much easier then rewriting the app in Objective C.

The only partially portable solution currently available is using HTML5 and Javascript for web apps or applets.

 

[gnagy]

I like how he keeps saying "performance is beautiful". I saw smooth scrolling 2D graphs on my 33Mhz 386, 20 years ago. Seeing them on a 1Ghz+ device is not shocking. The fact that there was no animation when the android tablet was rotated is shocking however.

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

Apple learned long ago that what's "more comfortable" for the developer does not cause the creation of the best apps for the consumer, on average. If that wasn't true, then Windows Mobile apps would be outselling the iPhone (and Android) apps by a huge margin. Are they?

WP7 was last out of the gate, and has the smallest user base, why would they be outselling iPhone and Android apps? Especially by a huge margin?

Just because it's developed cross platform does not mean the apps can't be good. Do you not realize how similar many apps are between Android and iOS anyways? Pandora, Facebook, Slacker, many weather apps, a bunch of games, most news apps, are all very similar between Android and iOS, if the devs could have used one tool to make that app and put it on all platforms then done some debugging and testing to ensure it ran well, why does it matter to you if it's developed with Apples SDK or a 3rd party tool..?

 

[JackAxe]

The problem is arises when script kiddies/web designers get the idea that they too can be app developers thanks to the magical WYSIWYG Adobe products... And I'm sure Adobe isn't too eager to set the score straight in that respect.

You mean like Corona SDK, that uses Lua script and makes some things deceptively easy.. Or all the iOS web apps that were developed using the WebVeiw...

Anyways, unless I've taken what you've written out of context -- which I doubt, you're speaking out of complete ignorance. This is the age of the web, do some research. READ for the sake of being informed.

 

[racketeer71]

Some of my favorite iPhone games are from Donut Games and Miniclip.com.

They look and play almost exactly like the games on their websites.

Do the Flash-haters think those games were re-written in arcane objective-c? (I.e. Rat on the Run, Fragger)

If not, it just goes to show that funny and amuzing games can be made in Flash for the iPhone, as long as one is willing to admit that a game doesn't need fancy 3D graphics at 100 FPS to be fun and amuzing.

 

[res1233]

Mac laptop covered with an Android sticker, and the only mobile device there that he labels as his was the iPad 2. He's probably a member of these forums.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Have a look at this and tell me what's ordinary about it:

http://machinarium.net

That game is made with Flash, it runs on OS X (and can even be purchased in the Mac AppStore), Linux and Windows and if Steve Jobs would listen to reason, stuff like this could also run just as easily on your fancy little iGadgets. At least now, thanks to Adobe and not thanks to Apple, there is a way for developers and designers to also port their great work to your crippled iPads and iPhones.

By the way, Flash 10.3 runs extraordinarily well on the Samsung Galaxy S2. I don't know why His Steveness is brainwashing everybody to believe that Flash performs poorly on phones. But then again, the S2 runs with an OS that was NOT designed to restrict its users and it also has a fully featured web browser.

Extraordinarily well? 10.3 runs like garbage on general Linux and Nvidia has already confirmed Flash's vdpau is broken and Adobe is silent on fixing it.

 

[Ijustfarted]

This isn't a discussion about the Flash plugin, it's a discussion about Flash Builder.

You think they know the difference?

Lmao. I'm lol'ing at those idiots as well

 

[.11]

There's hardly any meaningful differences anymore. Anyone can transition between Obj C 2.0 and Java. The real complexity in porting apps is the UI. Java doesn't solve that problem.

There's nothing that replaces Interface Builder, and certainly nothing comes close to the new XCode 4 storyboards. What's the point of going to Java if your workflow is crippled?

Really? That interesting, I've looked at Obj C, but never tackled since I don't have a mac. But now that I am getting on I will take another look.

If you have used Objective C, can you translate this quick Java code to Obj C.

import com.appname.features;

public class ObjCToJavaTest {
	
	private string name;
	private string id;
	
	public ObjCToJavaTest () {
		this.name = '';
		this.id = '';
	}
	
	public Test(string _name, string _id) {
		this.name = _name;
		this.id = _id;
	}
	
	public void outputMessage() {
		System.out.println(printMessage());
	}
	
	private string printMessage() {
		if(valuesSet())
			return id + " " + name; 
		else
			return "Values not set";
	}
	
	private boolean valuesSet() {
		return !name.equals("") && !id.equals("");
	}

	public static void main(String args[]) {
		Test firstTest = new Test();
		System.out.println(firstTest.outputMessage());
		
		System.out.println();
		
		Test secondTest = new Test(".11", "42");
		System.out.println(secondTest.outputMessage());
	}
}