All Articles Tagged flash

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:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

GearLive reported Flash for the iPhone was immanent. Adobe retorted that it was all up to Steve Jobs. His Steveness resorted to telling investors that Flash desktop was too big, Flash Lite was too small, and they were missing a product that was juuuusssst right.

Well, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen hopes Apple’s newly released SDK will help Adobe deliver that middle ground, with or without Jobs’ blessing. Speaking to investors, Narayen said (via Apple Insider):

“We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone. We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.”

Hopefully without those peskyprivacy and security problems, b’okay?

Given the restrictions imposed on 3rd party apps, unless Apple gives Adobe “special dispensation” it seems unlikely that even Adobe could get Flash working in an unplugged-in, sandbox environment, but we’ll see.

Eerily similar to Sun’s Java announcement immediately following the iPhone SDK launch, all that remains now (in terms of rival interactive development platforms) is Microsoft’s Silverlight. Balmer, get your dance shoes!

The internet in your pocket. That’s what Steve Jobs and Apple advertising have promised us since Macworld 2007. Not the watered-down WAP internet, the server-pre-rendered kinda-sorta-internet, or the stunted mobile internet. Just… the internet.

In large part, they’ve succeeded. By promoting open, standards-based support for HTML (hyper-text markup language) structure, CSS (cascading style sheet) design, Javascript actions, and the hybrid interactive richness of AJaX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) that enable WebApps, Apple has brought us the closest thing yet to a desktop-class browsing experience on our mobiles.

About the only thing missing, many would argue, is Flash.

Adobe’s ubiquitous interactive, multi-media technology powers everything from online office apps to easily embedded video clips to in-our-face banner adds. It also powers it’s own “cookie” (online state-saving and tracking) system. Didn’t know that? Advertisers do. They already exploit Flash cookies on the desktop. And as much as we want our videos clips on the iPhone, they want their cookies more. After all, the iPhone is the “next generation mobile” devices — the one that know everything about us, including who we are and where we are, with all of our private contacts and secure contents just there for the tracking, aggregating, and selling.

Read the rest of this entry »

Also asked and answered at the Apple shareholders meeting covered earlier was a question about the oft-rumored Flash player for iPhone. CEO Steve Jobs put a Goldilocks-esque kibosh to the rumor thusly:

• Desktop Flash is too slow on the iPhone to be useful.
• (Mobile) Flash Lite isn’t sufficient or advanced enough to iPhone.
• And there just isn’t a mid-level version that would be just right.

John Gruber’s toldjasos and youmustbejokings were interrupted only by Jobs stressing that Apple and Adobe (who makes and markets the ubiquitous player) maintain good relations, so potential enough remains to feed the rumor-mill for posts to come.

However, it’s worth remembering that:

• Flash is a notorious resource hog on OS X and Adobe has never really addressed this for the desktop
• Regardless of its ubiquity Flash remains a proprietary standard and Apple has stressed open standards (like AJaX for MobileSafari)
• And perhaps most importantly, Flash is a competitor to Apple’s (admittedly languishing) QuickTime and Apple could very well be preparing to put some of their sudden mobile browsing penetration behind their own product rather than just handing Adobe the space.

Macworld also adds that, with regards to raining on Dieter’s iPhone SDK parade tomorrow, “you’ll see a lot of applications out there this summer.”

So says Gear Live, who claims “reliable sources” tell them that it should be coming “very soon.” What about those pesky technical issues that were supposedly keeping us from enjoying embedded YouTube Videos (without the iPhone’s YouTube app) and amusing Homestar Runner games directly on the iPhone? Supposedly that was all a big lie, the real issue was on the business side.

Maybe this end-of-February mystery event will be about more than just the SDK?