Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Johhny — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:29:20 -0000

The only real flaw that people are poking at on the Pre is the amount of apps. That should not be a problem hough i the next few years. The Pre's hardware such as flash and the new WebOS will make it easier to create apps. So all in all, people should be comparing the hardware and seeing the Pre's iant leaps in networking. The amount of applications on the Pre may be low but that is only because it just came out!

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Some Guy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:15:07 -0000

"No iPhone support for Flash yet."

Scoble,

It seems to have escaped your attention that Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone. It's a major resource hog. Also, anything that runs a language interpreter (like a JVM or Flash) is explicitly prohibited by the iPhone developer terms.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Coker — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:08:28 -0000

Oh, I never owned an iphone but learnt it doesnt have context menus nor cut/paste? whao, cant imagine the pain, wondering what usability it has then. Move over to win mobile folks.

I think apple doesnt want flash on iphone, period! It's not a matter of flash 10 being too heavy or flash lite being too light. There's flash 7 for windows mobile and runs pretty well even though most of them have lower processors compared to said iphone. Check their sites, not a byte of flash is there. The reason: Flash killed Quicktime! It's time for payback.

Most bloggers here are talking of sites running flash and animations being a disturbance. The purpose of porting flash lite to pre and by extension the purpose of this announcement is not really for phones to play flash content based sites. It's for us developers to leverage flash to build apps that'll run on mobile phones. The $10million is not to build flash sites, it's to build sexy flash applications that will wow users on mobile phones and that's flash's strength and that is the purpose of porting flash to mobile phones!

For you guys that say social networks dont need flash, for the record: what does Facebook officially use to Play your uploaded videos? What does it use to record videos? how about myspace? what does CNN, BBC use to play videos? Maybe we should go back to choose from options: Windows Media Player | Real Player | Quicktime Player. Flash makes life seamless.

If you have developed on J2ME (Java's mobile edition) and Flash Lite, then you'll understand better. To create a button in J2ME, you have to program the raw look and feel. In Flash lite, you draw a button with Mouse! Moreso the strength is in its consistency. What I see on phone A appears same on Phone B.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Joseph — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:46:30 -0000

Abhishek, are you saying Nokia never makes mistakes because they are bigger than Apple? By your logic, the N-Gage is the leading mobile gaming platform right now.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Scarhawk — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:10:44 -0000

Robert, can you please follow up on the .epub ebook support? The Kindle format isn't readable on a PC, only the Kindle itself. It seems safe to say people will buy more ebooks if they're not locked to one device nor locked out of their "main" device, the notebook. If Amazon sticks to their format, who will create the centralized store for .epub and what devices will play it? Thanks!

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Abhishek — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:08:41 -0000

Yup, looks like we'll have to wait and see.
If a company like Nokia with a reach of millions more than Apple decides to support flash in its flagship releases, they aren't being fools in doing so. Questioning the necessity of flash on phones is something that the users will have to decide (and companies, follow). Not mobile phones companies, not apple, not you, not me. Lets just wait and watch.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

PXLated — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:26:11 -0000

Abhishek..."Whether user’s do install / enable it is the issue you’re debating here."
No, I'm debating if proprietary Flash is even needed and if Apple should worry about it. With 15-20K iPhone apps currently available I can't imaging there's much interactive that won't be available. And I don't see that many Flash sites in the overall scheme of the web.
But, it's all mox/nix as Flash10 is a year away and we won't know if Adobe was able to make it work efficiently/well/robust till then. They don't exactly have a good record in that regard.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Mystica — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:44:54 -0000

It has been too long for iphone to not have flash inside.
In this comparison the nokia's n97 is better (not even palm pre). but iphone market will be hit bad. Then maybe apple will get flash on iphone

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Abhishek — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:23:43 -0000

PXLated - Yes. I'm all for open standards. Quicktime is not open. Open Screen Project is all about getting the flash standards open and transparent.

regular flash sites - yes, including the ones which stream audio / video (I'd personally want this).
regular flash sites which now support smartphone viewing and touch capabilities - that will go beyond the outcry. Supporting flash will not only allow the users to view flash content as expected, but will provide platforms for a better experience thereby surpassing the initial expectation. Thats how softwares and platforms develop.

But all in all, what's the harm in _supporting_ flash. Whether user's do install / enable it is the issue you're debating here. That's their choice isnt it?

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

PXLated — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:27:00 -0000

Abhishek - "Promote quicktime?"
No, how about just open standards rather than Quicktime, Flash or any other proprietary tech. Instead of Flash Video, standard h.264.
-----
"no-one has yet built with that mindset"
So Flash 10 is in 2010 and developers will have to change their mindset and develop different sites specifically for mobile? I thought the whole outcry was for accessing regular Flash sites.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Abhishek — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:16:16 -0000

Albert - Completely agree. Although I personally believe devices should be open to all options and not a mode for controlling future software direction. Let them be 2 separate battles. How many sites use quicktime anyway?

Peter - by Analytics using Flash, I meant its use as a standard, not the specific functionality.

"Could you please point me to one Flash site with 'Rich UI' which theoretically could work 1:1 on smartphone."
Smarphones haven't yet had flash support so no-one has yet built with that mindset. That's precisely where the 10M$ grant is aimed at, you'll see enough practical-not theoretical-sites and applications coming up soon. One big sector I see is streaming.

Of course opinions on flash may vary. But those who don't like it can still turn it off on the phone if its available, right? Why cripple the experience for those who do want it? Promote quicktime? I'd hate that

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Abigail Hamilton — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:40:42 -0000

When it comes to the pre or whatever, it's the United States of Whatever (http://www.youtube.com/watc.... I want Flash support on my iPhone because it is the only device that really matters and it needs two things: Flash support and cut-and-paste abilities. It''s really very simple.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Ken the tech — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:39:43 -0000

Adobe Flash player 10 get me in some kind of problems. I am talking about my wordpress blog and the impossibility to upload any picture in my blog posts. Lucky me I am a smart guy and I figure it out how to solve the issue.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Peter — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:50:03 -0000

Abhishek,
Google Analytics also use mouseover effects on those graphs. How those will work on mouseless device like smartphone? Could you please point me to one Flash site with "Rich UI" which theoretically could work 1:1 on smartphone.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Christopher Coulter — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:36:33 -0000

Adobe wants Flash everywhere, playing political games gets them nowhere. Announce on Palm, eventually it will hit Apple. Apple has it's own reasons, just like the Georgetown Historical District Board has theirs. Obviously they don't feel that Flash is optimized for mobile devices, and that Lite doesn't give you the full experience. The fact of Palm doing an "broke version" is actually good news to them. But really a moot point, Palm will need at least 2 years to even get up to speed, assuming they last.

You are creating fake phantom drama where there is none, not that unusual, quite a common blogger technique. Apple is all about the experience, Adobe is all about the market share, end of story.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

shareme — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:31:22 -0000

Why does Scoble always miss the Android announcements?

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Albert Willis — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:34:42 -0000

How can Apple be 'snubbed' if Apple doesn't want Flash in the first place? It's really about Adobe signing up the 2nd tier smartphone vendors because it can't get Flash on the coveted iPhone. That's really the story here; lets pay attention, okay?

Apple has sold over 17 million iPhones and many iPod Touches in less than 18 months without Flash. By the time the Pre ships, Apple will have over 20 million iPhones in the wild.

Obviously, if Apple wanted Flash on the iPhone, it would already be there. As soon as the iPhone's SDK became public, Adobe said it wanted to bring Flash to the iPhone. Similarly, Sun said the same about Java. That was nearly a year ago.

How's that working out for them? Here's a hint: there's no 3rd-party runtime environment on the iPhone. No Java; no Flash. Think about it: Apple is not going to turn over control of a critical piece of iPhone functionality (video/animation) to 3rd-party technology like Flash, unless it's deeply involved in its development and implementation. I doubt Adobe would go for the kind of terms Apple would want anyway.

What's Apple's plan? We won't know until Apple is ready to talk about them; however, some data points do exist: Apple has an entire media stack called QuickTime; perhaps you've heard of it? The iPhone contains hardware for accelerated playback of H.264 video, which QuickTime supports. Mobile Safari already supports CSS Animation which works like Flash; see "CSS Animation Coming to Safari, Already in iPhone. Less Dependence on Flash?" http://bit.ly/5A15v. Native iPhone apps can already use Core Animation.

I suspect we'll know lots more about all of this come June, with Apple's World Wide Developers Conference and the announcement of version 3.0 of the iPhone's operating system.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

marktyers — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:55:32 -0000

I have been using the iPhone 2G for a while now and do a fair amount of surfing on it. The only time I miss Flash is when someone twitters a link to a flv file. Having said that some people 'still' link to wmv content. IMHO Flash is a massive resource hog and having it on the iPhone could have a massive impact on performance (especially since the browser supports multiple 'tabs').
The other issue with Flash is that so called 'designers' use it to create website monstrosities with weird navigation and large, fixed-width layouts that would be almost impossible to use on a small screen.
By not giving web designers the crutch of Flash it forces them to be more creative when delivering content to the iPhone resulting in better use of alternative technologies such as CSS/JS including AJAX which tend to require far less bandwidth. I shudder to think of web developers being able to create Flash 'experiences' for my iPhone and hope it never happens...

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

PXLated — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:40:40 -0000

Abhishek - And we'll be able to disagree for quite some time if TechCrunch is correct that it won't be available on any of those phones until 2010. They used the word Vaporware :-)

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Abhishek — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:33:33 -0000

PXLated I dont think flash is _critical_ either. But IMHO that does not warrant it being forcefully absent from the browsing/using experience. Let the users have a choice to decide what they want or dont.

It's true that a lot of killer / popular web 2.0 sites manage without flash. Most video streaming sites use flash. Agreed, twitter may not use flash, but 15% of all tweets come from AIR clients like twhirl, tweet deck, snitter and the like. Yes It may not be critical. But blocking options in favor of what's critical is Simply not the way to go.

I will not get an iPhone if it doesnt support flash. There's just so much available on swf/flv that not having it makes for enough loss to support an alternative like Nokia's N97 or Palm Pre.

I guess we'll have to disagree and leave it at that

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Michael Long — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:19:43 -0000

"...which keeps a lot of Web experiences from working."

If by web experiences you mean annoying Flash-based "rich" advertising... then you're welcome to all the experiences you desire. ESPECIALLY on a portable device like the iPhone.

I even keep Flash turned off by default on my desktop. Blocks 90% of the junky bandwidth-clogging CPU-sucking advertising.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

PXLated — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:11:21 -0000

Abhishek - I guess we'll have to just disagree. I don't think Flash is critical. Yes, there are a few sites where it's prominent but the vast majority not. And most hot Web-2.0 sites/tech don't have/require it (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) nor do most eCommerce sites from good old Web-1.0. Macromedia/Adobe have been hyping Flash and how it's the future since as long as I can remember (used to go to all the FlashForward conferences) so I take it all with a grain of salt.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

Elliot — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:01:31 -0000

Interesting that they are also supporting a FlashLite release for Windows Mobile. I've heard some people saying it's dying but I don't really think so. Still a good amount of developer support out there. I like being able to do true multitasking on my phone & WM does a decent job at it, especially compared to iphone (it's faked if I remember right). Palm Pre looks like the phone i've been waiting a long time for, can't wait.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

tom — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:40:13 -0000

there is a nice "bonus" in not having Flash on the iPhone. Given the exorbitant costs for downloading to mobile devices in most markets I am somewhat glad I don't get bombarded with Flash adds while web browsing.

News Corp sites especially seems to be very heavy on Flash adds. There is one news paper site in particular which downloads a whooping 5 Mbytes in adds when you his the homepage.

Re: Did Adobe snub Apple with FlashPlayer 10, Palm Pre, and Development Fund announcements?

R Douthit — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:13:54 -0000

So, Palm has their OMG oh so awesome product that will ship... er, maybe Q3. You can only compare what you can buy. Today. By the time the PRE launches, I would be shocked if the next iPhone wasn't out, or was right around the corner. Quite possible with Flash. Or maybe not. Who knows?

This reminds me of the old 3D card wars. Even if some company is circulating press samples, it doesn't mean jack if they're not available to the public.

Some perspective in the iPhone vs. Pre kerfuffle, please.

Disclaimer: Yes, I currently own an iPhone. Yes, I've also owned almost every previous version of Palm (starting with original through the 700p) and would own one again if it is significantly better than whatever else I'm using - when it ships.