All Articles Tagged flash

Casey already told us about how an iPhone ad was banned in the UK for “misleading consumers” about providing “just the internet”, and based on how many ZOMG! No Flash Vidz! comments we get, I’m going to go out on a limb and say most people probably share the belief that MobileSafari - ( Flash + Java) != the internet.

Fine.

But allow me to retort. As a long time web (and Flash) developer, however, I’m calling shenanigans on that, and on the UK Advertising Standards Authority. Flash and Java are factually and empirically NOT part of the open, standards based Internet (i.e. HTML, CSS, Javascript/AJAX). Flash and Java, along with things like SilverLight, Real, ActiveX, and a host of other proprietary add-ons are plugins, extensions, and otherwise additions to the Internet — with all the benefits and drawbacks that go along with that.

Like what? Read on after the break!

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Here at TiPB we’ve covered the heck out of the Flash on the iPhone debacle. Will it, won’t it, can it, should it, omgvidz!1 and privacy nightmares. But it just won’t stop. Current case in point, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was once again let near a live mic:

We have a version [of (Mobile?) Flash] that’s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that we’ve made to date.

Great. Only Flash for OS X was never fully optimized by Adobe, making it a resource hog and increasing the bugginess of browsers (any guesses on how it will run on the iPhone?). Also, Apple hasn’t approached Adobe to do a MobileSafari plugin anyway, (though iPhone 2.0 seems to include a YouTube plugin…), and the iPhone SDK end user license still seems to disallow something like Flash (or Java) from running their own code. So, this means precisely what, exactly?

For those hoping to get Flex apps up on the iPhone, Apple already has an SDK and won’t allow a “competitive” dev environment to murky up their Cocoa Touch and SproutCore plans. From a dev point of view, sure it may limit apps from people already familiar with Flex, the same way it limits those already familiar with Java. While this may sacrifice the ability to leverage code from other platforms, most SDK demos rave about how fast porting has been, and really keen devs will just pick up the aforementioned Cocoa Touch environment and run with it anyway.

For those who just want them their vidz, Apple seems to be banking on YouTube via H.264 app and plugin being enough to stop a general revolt while they establish their “next big thing” mobile platform without Adobe’s tech being invited to the party. Will that be enough? Depends on how much people want everything beyond YouTube, from Hulu to pr0n. (And the obnoxious banner adds that will inevitably come with it).

Apple and Adobe need each other but also don’t seem to have the best of relationships. They’re both gambling big time, with huge stakes. Adobe has a more flexible hand (no pun intended) but Apple has a poker face that makes a mannequin look overly emotive.

My guess? No Flash for the iPhone remains the status quo. What’s yours?

UPDATE:

Iconfactory and Twitteriffic luminary Craig Hockenberry posts the funniest Flash on iPhone tweet ever on Twitter:

Hoping that Adobe will use a flash:// URL scheme. Would make it very easy to avoid on both the iPhone AND desktop.

Meanwhile, Adobe responds on their blog.

UPDATE 2:

Kontra ponders if this is all really a fight over the future of user interfaces, with Adobe trying to set their own cross-device conventions.

And Gruber points out even Apple’s own Quicktime content doesn’t run in-line in Mobile Safari, but launches a [Quicktime X?] player.

Which raises an interesting point: How would running video be handled in MobileSafari anyway? If you tried to swipe, scroll, pinch zoom, double-tap, etc., wouldn’t it create enormous resource demands on what’s still a small, mobile chipset? And if they lock the multi-touch down anytime Flash content (including ads) pop up, it makes the browser otherwise useless. Seems this would almost guarantee the need for an external player. (Or do the video game demos show that it could handle this well enough?)

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If the next great future of computing in the Cloud, as many pundits — not to mention Google — think, then the next great race is delivering that future via Rich Internet Applications. Right now, there are two major ways of doing this. The first involves using a proprietary, locked in technology (admittedly with increasing “openness”) like Adobe’s Air/Flex/Flash trifecta, or Microsoft’s .Net/Silverlight double team. The second is with truly open standards such as HTML, CSS, and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) like Google, Yahoo, and many others use.

With the iPhone Apple has squarely planted itself in the second category. They even promoted them as a pseudo-SDK for a time! (And maybe gave up too soon?)

Flash-free, Silverlight-less, but full of interactivity and cloud-based applications, Apple just unleashed .Mac upgrade MobileMe complete with “desktop class” mail, calendar, contacts, and photo gallery web apps.

And according to this year’s WWDC buzz, they used SproutCore’s Javascript frameworks to do it? Why?

SproutCore not only makes it easy to build real applications for the web using menus, toolbars, drag and drop support, and foreign language localization, but it also provides a full Model View Controller application stack like Rails (and Cocoa), with bindings, key value observing, and view controls. It also exposes the latent features of JavaScript, including late binding, closures, and lambda functions. Developers will also appreciate tools for code documentation generation, fixtures, and unit testing. A key component of its clean MVC philosophy that roots SproutCore into Cocoa goodness is bindings, which allows developers to write JavaScript that automatically runs any time a property value changes. With bindings, very complex applications with highly consistent behavior can be created with very little “glue” code.

Check out the read link for more on Apple’s use of SproutCore, and how it might just be part of a growing trend for open standards-based web interactivity.

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Honestly, its like one of those TV cop shows where the tip lines are finally thrown wide open and everyone and their alien-proof tinfoil hat starts flooding with the calls…

First up is Engadget bringing word that the Australian NDA box and the Gizmodo iPhone (Red) and related images mentioned previously are, to quote Elaine from Seinfeld: “Fake, fake, fake… fake…“

Next up both DaringFireball and the Macalope heckle the comedy stylings of the CNN/Dow Jones-come-lately Apple pundits and their… er… seeming total lack of anything approximating industry-required knowledge:

Apple appears to be making room on the iPhone for flash memory, which means an end to Apple’s standoff with Adobe that’s kept iPhones from easily viewing a plethora of Internet videos. Apple has said that Adobe’s flash media player, which is on hundreds of other phones, doesn’t perform up to Apple’s standards for the iPhone.

Confusing NAND flash-memory storage with Adobe Flash video, eh? Gruber hits with some “flash bulb” mockage, while the ‘lope gets closer to my heart with some Barry Allen and Gordon style “Flash” comic reference. Luckily, no one went with the sleazier, if more obvious, trench-coat and goulashes-style “Flasher”…

Lastly, Apple Inside claims Apple is pushing developers to charge for what the developers want to offer as free applications, if not now than sometime in the future. Some suggest this is an effort by Apple to cover the bandwidth and transaction costs of the App Store. I don’t buy it. They give away tons of free, bandwidth intensive content on iTunes already like HD video podcasts.

The rumor seems to say Apple is pushing for dual versions, limited-functionality free versions as demos, with full versions as commercial — paid for — apps.

Uh… That’s pretty much the share-ware model already…

Like a moth to a flame or a Blackberry addict to email, I am drawn once again into the train wreck that is Flash on the iPhone. This time it’s courtesy one Robert X. Cringely, and it’s a brain bender!

Cringely says:

It seems obvious to me, however, that there is only one real reason why [rumors circulating the National Association of Broadcasters show suggested] Apple would sell off its professional applications [like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Shake, and Aperture] and that’s to avoid antitrust problems when/if Apple buys Adobe Systems as I predicted at the beginning of the year.

Gruber responds:

I Think Cringely Is Off His Meds Again

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber goes on to say that while Apple may (or may not) sell off its Pro Apps, it would only do so to downsize and maintain focus, something buying Adobe would pretty much be the opposite of.

Personally, I think Apple stands to benefit immensely one day from controlling the media pipe end-to-end, and part of that control is the high end content creation tools, the Pro Apps. That’s Apple end game, the media hub and all its satellites. And if you want that, you don’t go selling off your launch vehicles.

What do you think?

Confession: I’m suffering from extreme PFSD (Posting about Flash Stress Disorder). All this “will it” “won’t it” “please don’t let it” blog-pong has me cowering beneath my laptop. But I believe in facing my fears, real and absurd, so let’s see what Ars Technica has to report:

Adobe has announced a new initiative called Open Screen, which aims to make the company’s Flash multimedia technology ubiquitous on mobile and embedded devices. Adobe plans to eliminate the licensing fees required to distribute its own Flash player and AIR runtime implementations on mobile devices and will also remove licensing restrictions on the specifications for the FLV and SWF formats so that developers can create fully-compatible independent Flash player implementations.

FLV is big. Previously, 3rd parties had fairly open access to the rendered SWF format, but not the source FLV (in Flash, you build in FLV and export “movies” in SWF). Now, while Adobe won’t be opening up the source to their own Flash kit, they will be removing restrictions against competitive (video player, plugin, etc.) implementations. In other words, Adobe isn’t giving away the keys to the Flash kingdom, but they’re letting developers build a little village just outside the gates.

“Open as in Microsoft” more than “open as in GNU/Linux” to be sure, but this does take steps to remove one of the greatest criticism levied against Flash on the web: proprietary technology lock-in. (Which is unlike HTML, CSS, and AJaX — open, standards based technologies, that no one company could suddenly demand huge payments for, roll-in unwanted “features” like DRM, or simply choose to shut down one day, leaving developers stranded).

This is no doubt Adobe’s motivation for their increasing openness. They want to drive even more developer adoption towards their Flex and Air platforms, stave off competition from Microsoft’s Silverlight technology (which, ironically, has been trying to compete with Flash by offering up unprecedented openness — from Microsoft!), and keep pace with HTML5’s video tag and CSS-based animation.

But what does this all mean for Flash on the iPhone?

A more open, accessible license may let Apple build their own implementation, one they’re more comfortable with, and one that fills that missing middle slot between Flash Lite and Flash (desktop) that Steve Jobs feigned interest in.

Or it may just let Adobe or some 3rd party unleash another Flashenstein Monster a la Sony Ericsson.

Personally, I’ll be stockpiling torches and pitchforks (soon as I can stop cowering, that is). What do you think?

We’ve covered the iPhone Flash saga ad nauseam here, but in an interesting post involving the technology itself, NetNewsWire developer Brent Simmons (via DaringFireball) shares some interesting error/crash logs highlighting the instability-adding benefits of Flash, and the rapid catchup of Microsoft’s copycat, Silverlight:

I’ve said it before — one of my favorite things about the iPhone is no Flash. I will now add and no SilverlightPlugin.

As a web developer who uses Flash routinely, I’ve also come to enjoy its absence on the iPhone (and the absence of like technologies, and even prehistoric kin like animated GIFs), and the amazing increase that absence give to the information over noise ratio. It’s led me closer towards “Web 2.0″-style AJaX for interactivity, and away from the proprietary, and often overkill, that is plugin technology.

What do you think?

Yup. Just when ya thought it was safe to read the interwebs again, Gizmodo (via BGR) brings word that — you guessed it! — Flash is coming to the iPhone!

“You heard it here first, people! The latest version of the iPhone 2.0 firmware that was just seeded to developers has a YouTube plugin for MobileSafari.app”

Well, forgive me if I go looking for my iHulk Smash Puny Rumor graphic like immediately, b’okay?

Rumor gets reported there will be Flash on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rumor gets reported there will be unlimited music on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rinse and repeat.

What’s going on? Why aren’t we getting these stories straight?

Turns out maybe these stories weren’t meant to be gotten. Turns out maybe these stories were meant to get us.

There was a time when media really was the fourth estate, when it reported the news. In something akin to the scientific method, media observed what was going on in the grand experiment that is society, looked for pattern and flaw, then contextualized it, gave it form and flavor, and broadcast it by mule and truck and cable and fiber to those who wanted or needed to know.

Now media is entertainment and is competing with itself and other forms of entertainment for your attention and your dollar. One of the ways to compete is to get mysterious “un-named sources” to give you the highly prized “sensational headline”. And instead of digging for these sources and convincing them to come forward, the anonymous sources now trip and push past each other to get to the reporters first. Why? Because controlling the story is important. Information is power and spin is leverage.

Okay, soap-box, what does this have to do with the iPhone? Two interesting and very similar blog posts emerged recently shedding new light on both the Flash and unlimited music stories that have been all over the web lately. Let’s take a look:

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Will Flash come to the iPhone? Won’t it? Will it? Won’t it?

GearLive said yes. Adobe said maybe. El Jobso said too slow, too lite — where’s my middle?!. El Narayenso (er… Adobe’s CEO) said SD-OK! And… now Adobe clarifies that ambiguous yes with another maybe. Kinda:

“[T]o bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it. We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits Apple and Adobe’s millions of joint customers, so we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device.”

Hooked on the iPhone’s first reality soap yet? Us neither, but we’ll keep on it until those wacky techs finally hook up for good or call it quits forever.