All Articles Tagged java

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…

Back in August AT&T sent out a customer satisfaction survey to all iPhone owners. Well now it seems a new survey is being sent out to all of us on the AT&T network asking how the 2.1 firmware is working for us and what we want to see next on your iPhone 3G.

Now don’t get too excited yet! Just because they are asking what we want does not necessarily mean we will get it. Keep in mind Apple has stated before that certain features such as copy/paste and directional GPS take a back seat to other issues that need addressing so on and so forth. But it is better than AT&T and Apple flat out ignoring us right? So at least it is a start.

Apple Insider states:

The questionnaire asks owners to pick the top five hardware or software add-ons they’d like to see and include many of the most prominent requests made in the community, including cutting and pasting text, built-in instant messaging, Flash/Java support and MMS messaging.

So when and if you get this survey, be sure to speak your mind and let AT&T what know what you want. This is our chance… they seem to be listening. (Or at least they are pretending to be!)

[Via Appleinsider]

Last week the UK ruled that Apple was misrepresenting the iPhone’s provisioning of “just the internet” due to the lack of support for two ubiquitously popular 3rd party plugins: Flash and Java. We’ve previously covered the will they/won’t they drama surrounding development and deployment of Flash and Java pretty much ad nauseum infinitum, as well as some seldom discussed yet surprisingly frightening concerns about Flash and its downright sneaky use of 3rd party advertising cookies.

More recently, however, another issue has come to light. Primarily concerned with Windows Vista security and how it can be circumvented, this issue throws a renewed focus on the danger of 3rd party plugins like Flash and Java, on how they interpret and run code on our machines, and how they provide an increasingly popular attack vector for bad guys (hackers, malware authors, identity thieves, etc.)

How does this all relate to the iPhone, and what about ZOMG! Can has my Flash vidz? Read on to find out!

Read the rest of this entry »

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!

Read the rest of this entry »

Daring Fireball, via Digital Arts, brings word that Sun hasn’t stopped trying to bring a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to the iPhone even though:

Apple has not been publicly receptive to having Java on its popular new device. There have been questions about whether Apple’s iPhone SDK agreement would permit this. The JVM potentially could sidestep Apple’s App Store program for dispensing iPhone applications.

And while Sun’s efforts continue, they’re also hedging their bets with Innaworks, who produces alcheMo, which may let Java programs compile as native iPhone apps, ready for App Store:

[I]nitially targeted at games publishers. Now in a beta release, alcheMo for iPhone can be used to port Java ME mobile games to iPhone and iPod touch without the need for further manual adjustments. The product features an optimizing translator to convert Java ME application source code to equivalent source code for iPhone, according to the Innaworks press statement on the product.

While Apple’s Cocao Touch development sounds like a more chocolaty, and much sweeter beverage than Java, Sun sure does seem determined. Of course, determination has a tendency to crash and explode in Matrix-like bullet time when it strikes up against the Zen-like immovability of one Steven P. Jobs.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing the steaming coffee mug on the iPhone any time soon. You?

Sun, the company that loves Java so much they made it their stock symbol, has announced that they’ve looked at the new Apple SDK and believe they can use it to bring Java VM (virtual machine) ME (micro addition) to the iPhone:

“We’re going to make sure that the JVM offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible,” said Java VP, Eric Klein.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, having previously lavished Java with such praise as (paraphrased) “a ball and chain OS that nobody uses and isn’t worth supporting on the iPhone”, is no doubt in deep mediation over the news.

Java, the technology that enables everything from game-lets on other mobile phones to Blu-Ray’s interactivity layer, while not widely adored in the techsphere, is widely available and offers some cross-platform portability advantages for programers (who want to use their code on multiple OS’s).

Klein also mentioned the possibility of not only JavaFX (which supports Flash-like animation), but the full desktop Java implementation in the future.

Though Sun says they will deploy JVM via the AppStore coming with iPhone firmware 2.0, how exactly they will create what could be a competitive development environment is unclear.

Related news that may or may not provide some hints, however, comes from Apple itself:

..the iPhone SDK beta [...] includes a beta version of llvm-gcc 4.2 as part of the included Xcode 3.1 beta.

LLVM (low level virtual machine), may allow for this functionality, and will also help with (according to Ars Technica’s Siracusa), “Faster compiled code, faster code compilation, more metadata for the IDE, better portability, easier to improve all of the above.”