Adobe Ditches Development Of Flash For iPhone

[engine]

Adobe Ditches Development Of Flash For iPhone [news.cnet.com]

In that span of time, Adobe Systems has gone from touting its technology for building Flash applications that run on the iPhone to canceling future development of that technology.

When Apple changed the terms of its iPhone 4.0 software developer kit license, it effectively blocked Adobe's move. But in his Tuesday announcement that Adobe will cease future development of the Flash-apps-on-iPhone technology, Mike Chambers, Adobe's principal product manager for the Flash platform, let loose a tirade that indicates the battle between the two companies isn't over yet.

[johnnie]

Very, very annoying that the end user to suffer over this corporade feud.

[Hugene]

To me, this whole story is bad news. I am having nightmare flashes of Microsoft circa 1996-1997. Except that everyone, including regulators, are buying into Apple's hype machine. Not sure why.

[kapow]

Apple lead the way until they shoot them selves in the foot (think Macs). Hark was that a gun shot?

[Swanny007]

Good, now if we could just get rid of Flash altogether things would be great. I'm more about function than form. I don't need flashy widgets on a web page, I need good content there.

[BillyS]

I don't think Applites will care but this is obviously bad news.

[limbo]

Bah! A life without Flash is a duller one. They need to find some common ground.

[J_RaD]

HTML5 will fix this.

[Jon_King]

I have to admit that if Apple does not get this figured out I may not renew my service. Soooo many sites with some Flash I want to view are unavailble on my iPhone and I am sick of it.

[StoutFiles]

Soooo many sites with some Flash I want to view are unavailble on my iPhone and I am sick of it.

It will turn into very few as more and more sites will jump ship to HTML5 so they don't lose visitors from the iPad/iPhone.

[tangor]

Another look at the Adobe decision:

Adobe has said it won't be developing any more versions of its packager, which allowed Flash applications to be recompiled for the iPhone.

Instead Android will be its focus in the future.

Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone, so Adobe fitted its development platform with "Packager for iPhone" which compiles Flash apps into iPhone applications, so Apple changed the rules to say that developers must work in "Objective-C, C++ or JavaScript". Adobe was reduced to screaming abuse, threatening vague lawsuits, and now stomping off in disgust as the Flash product manager explained in a blog posting:

"We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature."

[theregister.co.uk...]

[Cancellara]

Apple or Google will soon buy Adobe .....

[tangor]

Bit of follow up:

Apple has issued a shock public attack on Adobe Flash.

Of course, it's not the attack that's shocking - just the public bit. Typically, the m.o. of the Jobsian cult is to abuse Adobe Flash behind closed doors - or simply ban it from popular handheld devices.

On Wednesday, Apple PR sent a - gasp! - statement to Cnet regarding the ongoing Adobe kerfuffle, and the irony is that it called Flash "closed and proprietary."
...
Adobe platform evangelist Lee Brimelow even went to far as to tell Apple to "Go screw yourself."

[theregister.co.uk...]
Things are heating up...

[kapow]

I'm not Apple's pawn. Its time to dump my iPhone and get an Android phone

[Syzygy]

Did Jobs not state recently that he predicts the demise of Flash within five years. Further, Flash is, he said, the main cause of crashes on Macs.

If it's not good for the user experience then surely the right thing to do is dump it? That, I believe, is the perspective that Apple is taking.

[ceestand]

It will turn into very few as more and more sites will jump ship to HTML5 so they don't lose visitors from the iPad/iPhone.

So they will lose all the corporate users who don't have the option of a fully-HTML 5 compliant browser?

[StoutFiles]

So they will lose all the corporate users who don't have the option of a fully-HTML 5 compliant browser?

No, they will display either HTML5 or Flash until HTML5 is compliant everywhere. If you have a time line where Flash will never be supported by Apple but eventually everything will support HTML5, which direction would you lean towards developing for?

Apple will eventually kill Flash by not supporting it, that is a fact.

[ceestand]

Adobe has somewhat done this to themselves. They made it too easy for developers to write bad code on their platform. That said, they have also been on the receiving end of some bad luck in the form of some ad networks disallowing flash files on updated versions, hampering what efforts Adobe did make in that area. As well as web users' increasing reliance on search, while as we all know, Flash indexes poorly. All of this leads to a bad and somewhat deserved reputation.

I personally won't be buying any Apple products ever again. I will try to dissuade all my network from buying as well. For those that think this is just a problem for Adobe: "They came first for Adobe, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Flash developer. Then they came for the RIAs, and I didn't speak up because I didn't dev for Silverlight or Java. Then they came for me and by that time there was no one to speak up because they were all locked into proprietary platforms and I couldn't get my app to work because it had yet to be approved and my company lost a source of revenue and my blog had been filtered for content and..."

[oodlum]

It's one thing for a device to be closed and proprietary (iPhone, XBOX 360, PS3, Nintendo DS, my alarm clock) and another for the entire web to rely on a closed, proprietary platform to function, no matter what the device (Flash).

[Sierra_Dad]

HTML5 will fix this.

Assuming Apple goes along with HTML 5. After all, 'developers must work in "Objective-C, C++ or JavaScript"' and HTML 5 isn't in that list.

What Apple wants to avoid is any apps that don't go through their closed process and which they don't get revenue from.

[Trav]

... Further, Flash is, [Jobs] said, the main cause of crashes on Macs.

Is this true? I don't use macs very often, but i can't recall one ever crashing due to Flash. This seems like an incredibly spurious claim to me.

[StoutFiles]

Is this true? I don't use macs very often, but i can't recall one ever crashing due to Flash. This seems like an incredibly spurious claim to me.

It's less reliable than HTML5 will be, but Jobs will say whatever it takes to get the focus off the real reason: No Flash = App Store = $.

[physics]

Apple is over the line. I like a lot of their products(have an iPhone, typing this on a Mac Mini, and have a MacBook) but the iPhone limitations are just stupid. Adobe is to blame too, but Apple is the one with the more monopoly position here and they need to open up.

I got sick of having bad call quality, no physical keyboard, limited options, and no Flash.

So I recently got a Motorola Droid and have no regrets regarding the abilities of the phone and the network (it was worth it for the network alone). Still have the iPhone to use basically as an iPod though.

p.s.
Just WATCH OUT for Verizon billing and third party retailers. I'm still disputing hundreds of dollars in inaccurate charges. All I'll say is buy your droid(s) at an official Verizon store so there is only one party to deal with.

[Syzygy]

Is this true? I don't use macs very often, but i can't recall one ever crashing due to Flash. This seems like an incredibly spurious claim to me.

Jobs' statements apparently comes from a meeting with execs on the Wall Street Journal...

[online.wsj.com...]

...in an internal meeting late last month [with the Wall Street Journal], Mr. Jobs told employees that Flash was "buggy" and blamed the majority of Mac computer crashes on problems with the plug-in software.

Mr. Jobs said Apple will support Web sites that use the emerging HTML5 standard, which is being developed by a consortium that includes Apple and Google Inc.

[incrediBILL]

Flash is buggy? That's a scream.

I remember people had problems with lots of Adobe software on MACs prior to OSx but it was the MACs crap memory management, not Adobe, that was directly responsible. Because of the lack of true memory management like Windows had, Adobe apps (PhotoShop, Flash, etc.) literally had to grab massive amounts of memory all at once to make sure it could function without crashing which could cause other apps to destabilize as the memory pool shrank to NADA.

So Jobs coming out calling Flash crap when his Mac OS's internals were a complete embarrassment is pretty rich IMO.

There are so many people with so much invested in their Flash sites that I doubt they redevelop the site because the Apple Dictator has ruled his minority stake in Computerville to be Flash free.

[Trav]

There are so many people with so much invested in their Flash sites that I doubt they redevelop the site because the Apple Dictator has ruled his minority stake in Computerville to be Flash free.

Agree. This seems like the immovable object vs the irresistible force.

[kapow]

HTML5 will fix this

Really!? I see how html5 can replace Flash-Video, but how does it replace Flash? With html5 how do you make one object morph into another with vector animation (tiny files)?

Of course badly crafted flash is slow, as is bad html, css, javascript...

Flash indexes poorly

Most flash is for illustration not the main content. We build corporate websites with all content in clean semantic html/css. They index wonderfully, they load fast, and there is usually some nice flash illustration to pretty it up.