All Articles Tagged flash

Adobe’s getting snarky over the continued absence of Flash on the iPhone, now presenting users with the above message which reads:

Flash Player not available for your device. Apple restricts use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch (sic).

Fair enough. Apple doesn’t allow code interpreters like Flash, Java, SilverLight, etc. on the iPhone. Even Apple’s own media plugin, QuickTime, doesn’t run inline on websites but rather launches a separate player app to show videos.

While the iPhone has an amazing web browser with Safari, it’s still a mobile web browser, and the iPhone doesn’t have anywhere near the CPU power, memory, battery, or other hardware resources that a laptop does, and even laptops can still be hit especially hard by Flash content. Maybe Adobe’s upcoming mobile friendly Flash 10.1 will finally present a really good, optimized, clean (and dare we hope secure and privacy-respectful) version of the plugin.

That is, if we’re getting the true story from either Apple or Adobe (as highlighted by this reddit thread, whether real or parody).

[via Adobe UI Gripes]

Daring Fireball has been linking to some interesting discussions on Adobe’s recent announcement that Flash CS5 will compile “ahead of time” native iPhone binaries that can be submitted, as is, to Apple’s iTunes App Store.

First up, KickingBear reminds everyone to give it a chance before burying it just on concept or principle:

Let’s be frank here – **** the tools. If you’re as deep a fan of the Cocoa tool-chain as I am then you likely came to them as I did – after years of dealing with the drastically inferior. Do I believe Cocoa is still the best tool? Yes, I do. But let’s not pretend that it’s the only tool. Some crazy people may prefer other tools, and we may well think they’re insane for doing so. The proof, however, is in the pudding. And it’s the pudding that our customers buy. I’m in love with my oven and at this point I doubt I’ll ever change it but I have no illusions that fashion won’t pass me by. If Adobe, or anyone else, can produce tools that provide a more compelling application on the iPhone then good for them.

On the flip side, /dev/why takes a look at what’s generated by the current process:

Now, the notion that what this thing emits is indistinguishable from something Xcode emits is laughable. They are very different, and not in a good way. While the apps may get acceptable frame rates on an iPhone 3GS, they don’t on earlier hardware, and they almost certainly uses substantially more power battery than native games.

If you’re interested in the topic, give both articles a read and then let us know what you think.

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Join Chad and Rene for AT&T’s VoIP over 3G announcement, Flash on iPhone and Jailbreak updates, and all the week’s news and views! Listen in!

Congratulations to Greg who gets an XGear Nitrous Oxide Case courtesy of the TiPb iPhone Accessory Store. You never know when they’re going to give something away, so join us live for your chance to win!

(And remember, you can watch live on your iPhone via the Ustream Viewer app [Free - iTunes link] as well!)

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Since Adobe can’t get Flash on the iPhone — yet — they figure the next best thing is to let Flash CS5 and ActionScript 3 compile native iPhone apps that can be submitted to the iTunes App Store and run on iPhones and iPod touches everywhere.

In fact, Chroma Circuit, Trading Stuff, Fickleblox, Just Letters, South Park, The Roach Game, and Red Hood — all already on the App Store — we also all already developed using Flash and converted to the iPhone.

Like the earlier announcement from Novell about MonoTouch letting .NET compile iPhone apps, Flash is using the same “ahead of time” compilation instead of “just-in-time” to build the native apps.

Some will say this lowers the barrier of entry for developers to gain access to the App Store. We just hope it doesn’t make it so low they trip over it on their way in.

Again, from our point of view, it’s ultimate not about making things easier for developers, it’s about making things better for end-users. It’s not about us getting more apps, it’s about us getting better ones.

If a bunch of brilliant Flash (or .Net or Java or whatever.runtime) developers suddenly cross over and decide to make brilliant apps for the iPhone, then, yay! However, in our experience the truly brilliant developers are the ones who care so deeply about their apps they edit them down to the last sub-pixel level, and tweak the code until it behaves like it was born to the metal. In other words, those developers likely already picked up Cocoa like it wasn’t no thing.

The other ones, the ones who just want to pump out as many $0.99 CrApps as possible — yeah, we’re worried they’re turning our direction, and we have enough of them already, thanks very much.

Are we overly pessimistic? (Though we’re hardly the only ones). Do you think a lot of great Flash games will suddenly make the jump to the iPhone now? If so, name us your favorites, and let us know!

Adobe is working on Flash 10.1, which is a version that’s finally supposed to suck less — battery power and cpu cycles, that is. Meaning, it might just be a contender to finally bring acceptable performance to mobile clients like the iPhone sometime in 2010, even if everyone BUT Apple has signed on at this point.

Back up: since the iPhone debuted with the first mobile web client that actually rendered “just the internet”, some users have clamored for Flash. And why now? They were used to that also being on “just the internet”. However, the iPhone was still a mobile device and Flash is still notorious for bloat, bugs, and otherwise non-Mobile friendly behavior (and no, we won’t mention the increased attack vectors runtimes bring to the table, nor the privacy concerns over Flash-cookies, again, okay?)

Steve Jobs himself famously blamed Adobe for having a desktop version that was too big, and a Lite version that didn’t really work, and said Adobe was missing a middle version that would be “just right”.

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More than 2 years post-iPhone launch, no news on Flash ever coming to the iPhone, yet Apple is pressing ahead with technologies like H.264 video (YouTube App’s been using it since day one), HTML 5 and CSS animation (iPhone Safari supported them first), HTTP Live Streaming, and now WebGL for hardware accelerated 3D-graphics, and TuneKit, the framework behind the new iTunes LP rich media content.

Read on to find out what they are, how they work, and why they might make plugins like Flash increasingly unnecessary…

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Well, at least kill the need for Flash on the iPhone? Daring Fireball says a simple “yes” to Yahoo! Tech’s question.

The idea is that a standards based technology, open and broadly used, could make redundant proprietary and sometimes bloated and buggy plugins like Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX.

Apple’s Safari, including Mobile Safari on the iPhone, and Mozilla Firefox are already supporting HTML5 features. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — so far — isn’t.

The article gives pros and cons for both sides of the debate. Since Apple is introduction the third generation of their iPhone software tomorrow, and still no Flash in sight, we likely have a good idea which way they’re leaning already…

Lately the forums have been on fire and leading up to another iPhone release it is bound to be one wild ride. So now is a perfect time to get yourself registered and join in on the conversation.

Just yesterday Rene started a interesting thread, Are You Running Your iPhone 3G on EDGE and Why? While I understand why some of you may choose to EDGE over 3G, for me, I like to live dangerously, 3G or go home. How about you? Stop by and let Rene know what you think.

This next thread was started by Crackberry veteran forum moderator, Duvi. He simply wants to know, do you think the next iPhone will come with a flash for the camera? Feel free to speculate all you’d like on that one. I’m going with no, it will not have a flash.

Next up we have a thread that yours truly started, it’s simply about the latest iPhone rumors. Is there an EDGE only iPhone in the works? How about a CDMA version for China? And before all of you Verizon hopefuls start to get exited – no, a CDMA version from China would not work on the Verizon network. They use different frequencies. Thoughts?

Poor RIM, I can’t remember such a hyped phone that pretty much just flopped from the very beginning. Enter the BlackBerry Storm. It seems like the in thing to do these days is ditch your Storm for an iPhone 3G. Not a bad move in our opinion and we welcome forum member whsingleton to the good side!

You heard that the App Store is approaching 1 billion app downloads right? Well you could win a $10,000 iTunes gift card and Dizzy wants to know, what would you do with a $10,000 iTunes gift card?!

Our last thread for today comes to us from Ivoryplum. Ivoryplum wants to know what is the average sync time with iTunes? I honestly can’t complain with my syncing. How about you?

So there you have it folks, some really good threads for all of you to check out. Just remember to register first!

See you on the forums!

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, Adobe took the wrapper off a real for-real version of their desktop Flash player designed (and hopefully optimized) for mobile devices like the iPhone. Well, technically they took the wrappers off the wrappers, since Flash Mobile won’t ship until the end of 2009 on its current schedule, and it won’t support the iPhone even then, only Windows Phone 6.5 (are we allowed to call it WinPho now?), Google Android, Palm Pre, and Nokia. Even these implementations are likely to only ship in 2010.

And the iPhone version? According to Anup Murarka, director of partner development and technology (via Macworld):

“We’ve made a lot of progress, but there is still a lot of engineering work to be done. [...] We’re working with Apple on what we have. We’re committed to make the Flash plug-in work on the iPhone.”

Analysts aren’t so sure, citing lack of low-level system access on the iPhone (and BlackBerry) as limitations, as well as Apple’s preference for their own QuickTime technology.

So, if no news is good news, not much news must be… what exactly then?

Just when we thought it was safe to forget about Flash on the iPhone, after Adobe said they were making it, after Steve Jobs said Flash Lite was too little and Flash was too much, after Adobe was reportedly strong-arming PDF for Flash, after Apple advocated AJAX and WebApps instead, after all the tears, and all the fears, is Flash once again on its way to the iPhone? Apple Insider says it might be:

>In an interview with Bloomberg at the Davos, Switzerland event, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen describes development as a complicated two-way process [...] “It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” he says. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

While many complain about the lack of Flash on the iPhone, it’s best to remember that while the iPhone provides the best mobile web experience, it’s not a desktop, and real Flash (not old, outdated, limited Flash Lite) is heavy lifting. Adobe has never properly optimized Flash for OS X, and it remains bloated, buggy, and a battery drain, which are annoying on a laptop but terminal on a mobile device like the iPhone.

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