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Microsoft Licenses Adobe Flash Lite for Mobile
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Flash isn't what has kept me form owning an iPhone as there are so many other features that make it a great device, but I don't mind waiting while my t-mobile contract expires for the iPhone to continue to grow as a mobile device (and that includes an app that can read Flash content).
I doubt lack of flash deters people form buying the iPhone, seeing that mobile internet browsing is crap on any other phone (This is not a fanboy comment, all stats agree with this, namely the fact that most mobile internet traffic is to the iphone). If you pick and N95 over the iphone for mobile internet because the N95 support flash you simply don't know what you want.
Yeah lack of flash does suck, but as the competition currently stands i can't see it being much of a deterrent.
Apple should implement FL3 support, but also an optional Flash Blocker that's similar to what's in FireFox, where as Flash content has to be clicked on to be viewed. This way the user could check to see if it's good content and in that case, add a preference if they like it. There's some great Flash content on the web, it's generally the stuff users don't know is Flash. Good 'modern' Flash content doesn't use that much CPU. It either uses less or about the same CPU load as other web-tech. CERTAINLY way less than Java and considerably less than the limitation that is AJAX.
Flash Lite 3 is a little bit closer to desktop version of Flash 8, but what it really needs, is its older brother's ability to use the GPU to speed things up, which with most phones supporting OGL ES, should be more than probable -- of course this is the same company that has yet to implement mouse-wheel support on the Mac side, which in turns forces peeps like me to use JS to get it working. Once Flash Lite is running AS3 with all of the bitmap goodies, FL content will see a huge performance jump. I can say this for a fact, since properly developed Flash 9 content runs way faster than any previous version, even on much older PCs/Macs.
Hmmm, I wonder where that cliché Flash hating monkey I encountered the other week has gone to... The guy that tried to tell me that Flash Lite doesn't run in a browser. Doh!
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Flash Lite 3 is a little bit closer to desktop version of Flash 8, but what it really needs, is its older brother's ability to use the GPU to speed things up, which with most phones supporting OGL ES, should be more than probable -- of course this is the same company that has yet to implement mouse-wheel support on the Mac side, which in turns forces peeps like me to use JS to get it working. Once Flash Lite is running AS3 with all of the bitmap goodies, FL content will see a huge performance jump. I can say this for a fact, since properly developed Flash 9 content runs way faster than any previous version, even on much older PCs/Macs.
Hmmm, I wonder where that cliché Flash hating monkey I encountered the other week has gone to... The guy that tried to tell me that Flash Lite doesn't run in a browser. Doh!
<]=)
Agreed. And many tech writers agree with you that the iPhone goes far and beyond other smart phones for internet browsing - and that doesn't make them fan boys either.
Great read about the iPhone and Flash. I suggest anyone participating in this thread read it.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/07/08/gone-in-a-flash-more-on-apples-iphone-web-plans/
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/07/08/gone-in-a-flash-more-on-apples-iphone-web-plans/
I've read that guys stuff before -- most of which is a an interesting read, but his "assumptions" of Flash are completely off and in some cases downright "false," if not lies!
His comments on H.264 are completely off. Flash's video format is similar to WMV or QT, as in it's just a wrapper. Flash 8 introduced support for On2 VP6 codec, Flash Player 9 version 3 has introduce support for H.264 and THIS IS NOT because of Apple, it's because it's a scalable codec, a "broadcast standard." Adobe adopted H.264 for probably all of the same reasons as Apple.
Flash's FLV format is the probably the biggest threat Apple has had against its Quicktime, this is why Apple will probably never support Flash on the iPhone(QT video iPod). My clients dumped WMV and QT support in favor of one format that worked on all platforms, and that's FLV. I still use Apple's products and QT as the wrapper for all of my video work, but the final output is mostly FLV these days, since I make most of my money via interactive work.
He didn't do his research, Flash Lite 3 supports FLV playback on ARM devices. FLV playback does NOT require a general purpose CPU to decode it. This guys comments are a fricking crock of *****, which anyone that's as ignorant about Flash as he is, will probably eat up as fact.
And his comments about alternatives to Flash, like HTML canvas tag and SVG only further show how absolutely clueless he is about what Flash actually is. Flash has evolved way beyond just animation. He has a mentality that is indicative of most Flash haters, peeps that can't look past Flash's earlier limitations from years back. None of the alternatives he mentioned are even remotely a competing web techs when comared to Flash 9/Flex. SVG can only compete with much earlier versions of Flash (AJAX is basically at the same level of Flash 5/6) As it stands, it's severely limited to Flash's capabilities and its cross-browser/platform support is inconsistent. He states that Flash Lite can only do slide show animation, this was partially true for Flash Lite 1, but not 2 and not 3, which are more robust than AJAX.
He goes on about how Adobe and Flash need to be stopped, then goes on to mention SVG. Get it straight people, Adobe has done lots of good for SVG, they were one of it's primary backers early on, before they bought Macromedia. It's not a good Flash alternative at this time and probably will never be. It's to Flash, what J2ME is to Objective C on the iPhone.
And he keeps on stating BREW is Verizon. It's Qualcomm's product, NOT Verizons. Operators all over world support BREW. Does this guy actually do research?!!! Most of his stuff is pure conjectures that don't have any basis on facts.
No matter how you cut it, there's always going to be someone that wants to be control. I prefer Apple to Adobe, but Apple doesn't make Photoshop and they don't offer a cross-platform solution I can use for development. Apple can control the iPhone/Touch and limit which video codecs it wants on it -- it's their right, but this guy gives Apple too much credit, as if they'll be able to stop Flash's momentum. As long as the iPhone is limited to AT&T and there are alternatives on the market, like Android, BREW, etcs, that work on a large variety of devices, Apple's offering will merely be a shining start amongst piles of blah that not everyone will adopt, just like the Mac.
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People, let's be crafty and really see this situation for what it is. Think like the business people. 
Microsoft's mobile division is facing the threat of the iPhone gaining market share. The big news has been the iPhone's lack of Flash support. Even though Microsoft will continue to cram Silverlight down peoples' throats, by making a big announcement that they are adopting Flash Lite, they hope to draw people away from iPhone. Simple as that.
As for whether or not iPhone should have flash...well it does suck not getting to use the full YouTube website. But, if I understand correctly, Flash Lite couldn't make YouTube work, am I right?
As for PDF technologies, if you don't have a Mac, walk into the apple store and sit down in front of a big, shiny iMac. Download and open a PDF. Having used Windows and Acrobat all my life, it's shocking how fast PDFs open on a Mac. Thank you PDFkit. Hopefully Preview 4 has brought display fixes that cover peoples troubles on here.
Disclosure: God I want a Mac...
Microsoft's mobile division is facing the threat of the iPhone gaining market share. The big news has been the iPhone's lack of Flash support. Even though Microsoft will continue to cram Silverlight down peoples' throats, by making a big announcement that they are adopting Flash Lite, they hope to draw people away from iPhone. Simple as that.
As for whether or not iPhone should have flash...well it does suck not getting to use the full YouTube website. But, if I understand correctly, Flash Lite couldn't make YouTube work, am I right?
As for PDF technologies, if you don't have a Mac, walk into the apple store and sit down in front of a big, shiny iMac. Download and open a PDF. Having used Windows and Acrobat all my life, it's shocking how fast PDFs open on a Mac. Thank you PDFkit. Hopefully Preview 4 has brought display fixes that cover peoples troubles on here.
Disclosure: God I want a Mac...
Just visited your site and understand why you have more than just 2 cents to add to the discussion. Very informative for me. Thanks.
Thanks. I normally agree with some of his articles on more than one point, since I'm partial to Apple, but he twisted too many truths about Flash to make his case.
Blah, my grammar can be atrocious. I should probably step back and take a breather before posting some of my longer rants.
<]=)
People, let's be crafty and really see this situation for what it is. Think like the business people.
Microsoft's mobile division is facing the threat of the iPhone gaining market share. The big news has been the iPhone's lack of Flash support. Even though Microsoft will continue to cram Silverlight down peoples' throats, by making a big announcement that they are adopting Flash Lite, they hope to draw people away from iPhone. Simple as that.
As for whether or not iPhone should have flash...well it does suck not getting to use the full YouTube website. But, if I understand correctly, Flash Lite couldn't make YouTube work, am I right?
As for PDF technologies, if you don't have a Mac, walk into the apple store and sit down in front of a big, shiny iMac. Download and open a PDF. Having used Windows and Acrobat all my life, it's shocking how fast PDFs open on a Mac. Thank you PDFkit. Hopefully Preview 4 has brought display fixes that cover peoples troubles on here.
Disclosure: God I want a Mac...
And it wouldn't be good business for Apple to offer support for the most popular web codec on their Quicktime playing Safari tablet.
Silverlight. Blah. It's limited to only the browser, doesn't have the years under its belt like Flash, nor the established developer community. It's like the Zune when compared to an iPod. To top it all off, it's PC dev only. I'm all for good competition though. There are a few minor things in Silverlite that will only push Adobe to improve on Flash further.
Flash Lite 3 can play You Tube content. Prior to its release, Flash Player 7 could do so. It was available on Windows Mobile and Pocket PCs. But compared to FL3, FP7 wasn't a good solution for tiny portable, since it required more resources. Adobe discontinued Flash Player 7 and has designated FL3 as its predecessor.
Apple's preview is such a wonderful upgrade to the bloat that is Acrobat. On this subject, Flash Paper -- which is similar to a PDF -- has been a good alternative for some of my clients for web viewing, since it's so much faster than PDFs on PCs. Of course it's not a good portable solution.
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Wirelessly posted (iPhone 8gb: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)
I have to agree adobe's reader is about as mobile friendly as windows is.
Also how slow will the mobile web be with all the adds.
I have to agree adobe's reader is about as mobile friendly as windows is.
Also how slow will the mobile web be with all the adds.
Jack, thank you for posting this. I am glad someone took the time to write the truth about the inaccuracies of that drivel (and of course people will just ignore it, posting the same stuff you refuted 3-4 posts down).
I am a recent Mac convert (about a year ago) and I originally came to this forum for information about my new MacBook Pro; I have since became an iPhone owner and continue to come here for news. I definitely believe the Mac is superior to Windows, however I can see why the PC guys hate us so much. The pure arrogance of some members of the Mac community is down right annoying. The predictability of this forum is almost comical, especially when this subject of Flash on the iPhone comes up...
Forum Poster #1 hates Flash for no reason other than to be different, makes up some holier than thou, "advertisements and porn" argument (because that's the ONLY Flash content available) and then decides to take the selfish approach of: If I don't want it and I don't like it, no one else should be ALLOWED to have it. Thank you Apple for governing what these intellectually inferior sub humans can do with this precious device.
Forum Poster #2 compares Adobe to Microsoft and rallies against their bloatware - even though 90% of the websites they visit were created with some part of Adobe software whether it be Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash or the countless number of open web standards they've helped shape over the years (including WebKit - Safari/iPhone's rendering engine). Forum Poster #2 also ignores the entire graphic design and web development community that has embraced Adobe products for decades, products which have earned hundreds of billions of dollars for them. They are obviously morons, who haven't yet seen the light or just can't come to terms with the bloatware they're running. They should be forced to download GIMP and those using Micro$oft Windoze should be punished by being forced to use FrontPage and Paint.
Forum Poster #3 decides to start a thread with in a thread knit-picking (oh wait NITPICKING OMG!!!!) on someone else's grammar, spelling and/or word usage, every three posts from now on will be completely off topic with other posters flexing their intellectual prowess.
Forum Poster #4 claims to be an electronic engineer and swears up and down that the iPhone just isn't powerful enough to run Flash (that BTW is the only thing that it's not powerful enough to do), completely ignoring Super Monkey Ball (but it's hardware accelerated!! pfft...) and the fact that Flash 8 is running just fine on other devices with half of the CPU processing power.
Forum Poster #86 posts something relevant and true which will be completely ignored as more 1's, 2's, 3's & 4's file in.
Sorry for the rant, I just needed to vent a little bit. I get more and more disappointed every time I read these types of threads with completely biased opinions and unsubstantiated claims.
So you have never been to youtube. Hmm, apple should remove that function, seems a lot of you don't use youtube (yes, i am being sarcastic, for smart people, i thought you all would realize you use a flash website when you visit youtube)
Flash Player 7 has been a free download for Windows Mobile 2003 and 5.0 from Adobe's website for quite some time now. (Officially it is a reference design to show developers the potential of incorporating their technology - for a fee - in embedded devices. However, there is no enforcement of any restriction on individuals downloading it for personal use.)
Flash Lite 3 (which is actually close to the functionality of the desktop edition of Flash Player 8, albeit still behind the capabilities of Flash Player 9) is its designated successor, and Microsoft has recently licensed it for use on Windows Mobile.
Note that Adobe's typical licensing scheme for Flash Lite has been to sell a device manufacturer rights to access the relevant specifications, technical support, and the source code of a reference design, in exchange for a per-device royalty. Then the device manufacturer is ultimately responsible for performing any customizations necessary to develop the player into a usable application on their particular platform. This is entirely different from the approach Macromedia/Adobe has taken for the desktop editions of Flash Player, where all development has been done in-house.
(Although I don't know the specific details of the license they've arrived at with Microsoft. Because MS is such a big player, it is entirely possible that Adobe has negotiated a special agreement with them.)
Actually, if you read the forum more closely, you would see that probably as many posters are in favor of Flash as against it.
Yes, I agree. Hard to think of Adobe as the evil empire when Photoshop is the best creative program I have ever used. Period. And my site is designed and executed with Adobe software. And I utilize Flash on my own site (although like all creative software, it's only as good as the designers that use it).
Apple licenses ActiveSync, Microsoft licenses Flash, dogs and cats living together, complete chaos!
Which rectangle/square is order front? With alpha transparency and varying opacity on the objects the color will vary.
File a Radar Bug on this topic. xpdf, Evince, KPDF, Okular and others open just fine.
I think Preview.app in OS X 10.4.x is reading the PDF 1.5 as actually PDF 1.4 and ignoring/mangling layer support.