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Flash CS5 Will Export iPhone Apps 154

HanClinto was among a number of readers to send word that Adobe has worked around the inability to run Flash on iPhones and iPod Touch devices. Adobe has been trying to work with Apple for more than a year to get its Flash Player software running on Apple's products, but has said it needs more cooperation from Apple to get it done. Now Adobe has come up with a work-around. At its Adobe Max developer conference in Los Angeles Monday, Adobe announced that the CS5 release of Flash Professional, due in beta later this year, will allow developers to write applications and compile the code to run on Apple devices. Getting these into the app store might be tricky, though.
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Flash CS5 Will Export iPhone Apps

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  • by chocobanana ( 974767 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @05:13AM (#29654625)
    Look in http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/ [adobe.com] They already show apps accepted into the store that were made by devs with prerelease versions of Flash CS5... I think this is cool as it will enable people skilled in Flash to stick to their tool of choice. I would love to see a comparison between developing the iPhone SDK and Flash.
    • by AwaxSlashdot ( 600672 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @06:14AM (#29654857) Homepage Journal

      I would love to see a comparison between developing the iPhone SDK and Flash.

      From Daring FireBall [daringfireball.net] :

      From the FAQ:

      Can I run content created with Flash in the iPhone simulator on Mac? No. Flash content created for the iPhone will not run within the iPhone simulator on Mac.

      Thatâ(TM)s because the Simulator runs x86 binaries, but Adobeâ(TM)s compiler only produces ARM code.

      Can I use native iPhone OS Controls in my Flash based iPhone content? No.

      Not surprising. Iâ(TM)m guessing this will mostly be used to make games anyway.

      No debugging. No native controls.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by samkass ( 174571 )

        No native controls makes sense, but "no debugging" doesn't follow from the "can't run in the simulator" statement. With Apple's toolchain, you can still debug while the software is running on the actual device (not the simulator). It's possible that Adobe has done something similar with this. I don't know. It would be interesting to find out one way or the other.

      • by StreetStealth ( 980200 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @01:29PM (#29659539) Journal

        No debugging. No native controls.

        Less space than the SDK. Lame.

  • Flash seems like it would need all sort of runtime support to do all the cool things that Flash is supposed to be able to do. If there is no runtime, and the language is just compiled down to native code, and it simply relies on existing iPhone libraries, then is Flash/ActionScript really all that useful and attractive as an implementation language?

    This is where Android really shines. You can program in any language, as long as it's Java.

    • This is where Android really shines. You can program in any language, as long as it's Java.

      Android has full C/C++ support, but then you're locked to whatever phone you made it for.

      Most devs would rather take a tiny hit in performance to not have to recompile constantly. If you go the C/C++ route, you have the chance that you'll miss out on an Android phone using a different SoC.

      With Java, you have languages like Ruby and Python too. ;)

    • by dFaust ( 546790 )

      then is Flash/ActionScript really all that useful and attractive as an implementation language?

      It's attractive to people that only know Flash/Actionscript and don't have the time/desire/skill to learn Objective-C.

      I fear just what kind of pre-existing crapware this will enable on the iPhone.

      • I work for a company that makes mainly Flash-based software. The thing about Flash is that with the same source code (totally unchanged between versions) we can output a web application and a stand-alone executable (for example, to go on a CD). Something which our clients love is the multi-format, multi medium nature of Flash. Yes, most of this can be done with Java, but not in the same amount of time and not with the same artist-integration Flash has.

        On the topic of iPhone integration, if Flash CS5 lets al

        • by gaspyy ( 514539 )

          Flash CS5 on both Mac and PC are supported. I am in the same position as you, especially since many people who play my chess game [flashchess3.com] would love to see it on their iPhones.

          As for quality, only AS3 is supported. Most simple/crappy flash games are written in AS1/AS2 because of the easier learning curve, but really, considering apps like iFart on IAmRich, I doubt anyone will contend that the quality of the approved flash games could be too low.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Canazza ( 1428553 )

            Thank god only AS3 is supported.
            Although, most of what our company outputs is AS2, mainly because our primary clients have paranoid and backwards IT techs who refuse to update their flash players, or low-budget IT Depts who are still using Pentium IIIs.
            Anything that'll give us some leverage to put AS3 into practice is well worth it
            "Sure, you can have it on the iPhone, but only if you update your flash player on your PCs"

            • That's absolutely funny, considering how many security flaws existed in earlier versions of flash, including the ability to access the filesystem via exploit.. oh well, tell them I hope they like being pwn'd for their ignorance on the issue.

        • if Flash CS5 lets almost anyone make iPhone apps will this slow the approval of apps as every Tom Dick and Harry will be submitting their Newgrounds fodder?

          You mean, slower than it already is, with everyone submitting their flashlight and other extra-generic apps?

  • It is extremely frustrating to have a very capable mobile browser and not be able to watch online video content, such as Hulu, ESPN etc. Flash games would potentially be a side benefit of the technology, but I care less about games than I do viewing online video content. I really wish either the content providers would ditch Flash as their delivery method or Apple would get on board with Flash 10.1 so I don't have some web content effectively gimped. Either would be fine with me, although I imagine ditch
    • by dingen ( 958134 )
      You do realize the news that Flash CS5 will be able to export iPhone Apps has absolutely nothing to do with Safari Mobile supporting Flash or websites ditching Flash for something else to show their videos, right?
    • by Bazar ( 778572 )

      Watching videos on your cellphone?
      We get charged by the kilobytes for online cellphone useage here in New Zealand, watching a 30 minutes youtube movie would probably cost at least 50USD
      If your annoyed that you can't download movies to your cellphone, i can't help but think your doing something wrong.
      Flash pages on the otherhand i can understand, especially since there are so many websites that don't function correctly without flash

      • We get charged by the kilobytes for online cellphone useage here in New Zealand, watching a 30 minutes youtube movie would probably cost at least 50USD

        iPhone users in the U.S. are typically REQUIRED to pay for a $30/month unlimited data plan, on the assumption that you will either use a lot of data, or AT&T still wants to make a buck off you.

  • by dFaust ( 546790 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @05:22AM (#29654667)
    There are already at least four apps on the store today that were built like this. This isn't Flash on the iPhone in any way - the apps are compiled into native iPhone applications. Does Apple have a rule somewhere that says all iPhone apps must be compiled with XCode?
    • by dingen ( 958134 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @05:28AM (#29654699)
      They do have a rule saying apps must be written using the iPhone SDK provided by Apple.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by joh ( 27088 )

        Yeah, but there's no rule that says that the code has to be hand-written. If it uses all the right APIs chances are that Apple will never even notice how the app was generated in the first place.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by cerberusss ( 660701 )

          Yeah, but there's no rule that says that the code has to be hand-written. If it uses all the right APIs chances are that Apple will never even notice how the app was generated in the first place.

          No, there is no specific rule, but there are a lot of complaints from developers using Phonegap [phonegap.com]. This framework allows HTML/JavaScript based development on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Apps developed using this framework have been rejected from the App Store in unusually high percentages.

          There are a lot of unwritten rules to the App Store as well. One of them is: don't use frameworks.

      • It's interesting if that is indeed the case, because there are a lot of apps out there that have been written using Unity3D [unity3d.com]...

      • Monotouch (Score:4, Informative)

        by AwaxSlashdot ( 600672 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @06:18AM (#29654877) Homepage Journal
        http://monotouch.net/ [monotouch.net]
        Compile C# code written against .Net libs and get it running on the iPhone. Monotouch provides a C# to ARM compiler and the ARM implementation of the .Net libs you might need.
      • by sootman ( 158191 )

        Do they? You've got to use iPhone APIs, but that's not the same thing as saying you've got to use Apple's SDK. We saw this also with last month's announcement of using .Net to build apps. [slashdot.org] As long as you wind up producing code that runs naively on the iPhone, I don't think it matters how you generate the code.

  • Serious question - I have no idea what their beef is. Is it yet more paranoid control of the apps , even apps running in a VM , that can run on their system or is some sort of security issue , or is it just sour grapes?

    • by dingen ( 958134 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @06:39AM (#29654933)

      The main reason Apple and Adobe fight over Flash is because Adobe doesn't want to do a complete rewrite of Flash for the iPhone and instead just wants to modify its Mac-version to run in Safari Mobile.

      Apple however isn't content with this, because it's their opinion that Flash for Mac/iPhone takes up too much resources, which will harm the "browsing experience" and drain the battery.

      Basically, Apple demands something better than Adobe is willing to develop.

      • by tpgp ( 48001 )

        Basically, Apple demands something better than Adobe is willing to develop.

        Do you have a non-speculative source for this?

        • by dhovis ( 303725 ) *

          Basically, Apple demands something better than Adobe is willing to develop.

          Do you have a non-speculative source for this?

          Have you ever used Flash on the Mac?

          • by elvum ( 9344 ) *

            It seems to work fine for me.

            • by dingen ( 958134 )
              Then you haven't looked at your CPU usage while running Flash on a Mac.
              • Then you haven't looked at your CPU usage while running Flash on a Mac.

                I can say the same about flash running on a windows pc as well. YouTube can peg an entire core on a 4 core cpu. In general, flash is pretty bloated and a resource hog, it'll be nice when html5 is fully out and supported along with 3d acceleration in the web browser. Flash being pushed aside for open standards seems like nothing but a win overall.

      • Apple however isn't content with this, because it's their opinion that Flash for Mac/iPhone takes up too much resources, which will harm the "browsing experience" and drain the battery.

        True. Flash on mobile browsers might be too much (hardware wise) for the current generation of smartphones. But we're getting there fast.

        Also, a proper flash plug-in would mean arbitrary code (which in Apple speak is code word for communism), and we can't have that sort of thing, no sir. Users must be protected from it at all cost.

        Apple: Making trusted computing cool since 2008.

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          True. Flash on mobile browsers might be too much (hardware wise) for the current generation of smartphones. But we're getting there fast.

          Actually, if you want to try surfing the flash based web, you really should try turning off adblock and noscript. If one flash ad doesn't bring your phone to its knees, a few of them will.

          I've tried flash on mobile devices. It's horrible. You're surfing around, and all of a sudden, your device hangs as it loads and runs some flash app. Worse yet, it won't budge since the f

      • More importantly its a platform to run ad-hoc applications on top of (like Java or Commodore 64) and Apple doesn't want their customers having freedom of choice to run applications on their phones.

      • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
        No, Apple just doesn't want people getting free flash apps on the internet when they could be paying Apple money for apps with the same functionality in the app store. It's not a technical matter, but rather a financial one, that keeps flash off the iPhone.
        • by dingen ( 958134 )
          There are *a lot* of free apps in the App Store right now. Apples makes absolutely nothing on these, but accept them anyway.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by BasilBrush ( 643681 )

      Paranoia is an irrational fear.
      Apple strongly controlling apps is a business decision.

      There's a difference.

      It's one of many business decisions that makes up the iPhone ecosystem. Something which has been phenomenally successful. Consumers like the end result, and vote with their dollars.

      Whilst Apple employees do make mistakes with edge cases of their rules, the rules themselves are not irrational. And Flash isn't an edge case.

    • by firewood ( 41230 )

      Probably at least 3 issues:

      Apple doesn't want any other company in charge of the API for distributing apps on the iPhone. Open web standards that they can influence are OK. But they don't want to give yet another potentially competing company an opportunity to "extend and embrace".

      Apple doesn't want any other company responsible for the security of a language interpreter or publicly exposed library. They want to be able or fix (or not fix) security problems on their own schedule.

      Current Flash implementat

  • Clarification (Score:3, Informative)

    by orta ( 786013 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @06:46AM (#29654957) Homepage Journal
    Before a million 'oh noes runtime' posts. It doesn't use the flash runtime, it uses Apple's LLVM to convert the usual AS3 JIT runtime to being a compiled app. This is why it won't have any problems with the app store. The OP is wrong, and it's documented. As proved by the fact they have apps on the store. I just hope this gets Open Sourced so that we don't have to use the Flash IDE to do it.
    • There are a lot of Phonegap [phonegap.com]-based apps in the App Store, too. But there have been a lot of rejections as well. Apple doesn't like you using third-party frameworks. This will be no exception -- a couple of apps in the App Store is not evidence that it's OK to use 3rd-party frameworks.

  • So they've written a static compiler, just like mono did?

    ahref=http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/open-source-mono-framework-brings-c-to-iphone-and-wii.arsrel=url2html-27181 [slashdot.org]http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/open-source-mono-framework-brings-c-to-iphone-and-wii.ars />

    • Yes, that's exactly what they did. Another commenter posted from another source that they modified LLVM to understand Actionscript and output AOT-compiled ARM code.

  • ...sign that horrid SDK license?

    Do you still have to buy a hideously overpriced Apple machine to use as a dev box?

    Flash (REAL, unchained and fettered, Flash) and Java do not exist on the iPhone for one simple reason: GREED.

    If a complete Flash Player and Java are on the iPhone, everyone can develop for the iPhone without an SDK, everyone can publish/sell applications without the crApp Store.

    I have no problem with a company making money off its products, but the lengths to which Apple disciples will go to ju

    • by dingen ( 958134 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @08:17AM (#29655433)

      If a complete Flash Player and Java are on the iPhone, everyone can develop for the iPhone without an SDK, everyone can publish/sell applications without the crApp Store.

      Your argument makes no sense at all. First of all, there are already lots of ways to build iPhone apps without using a Mac, like Unity 3D [unity3d.com] or MonoTouch [monotouch.net]. So you don't need a Mac, even without a JVM or Flash player.

      Secondly, you wouldn't be able to publish and sell apps if a JVM or Flash Player would exist on an iPhone, because without jailbreaking the device, the only way to install apps remains through the App Store. Supporting Java or Flash has nothing to do with the way apps are distributed.

      Rant all you want, but at least make sense while doing so.

      • by gaspyy ( 514539 )

        Secondly, you wouldn't be able to publish and sell apps if a JVM or Flash Player would exist on an iPhone, because without jailbreaking the device, the only way to install apps remains through the App Store

        Why? Maybe I want to sell through Apple's App store but also through my site directly and avoid their fees.

        Whether or not I use the SDK is kinda irrelevant as long I pay to join the developer program and get an iPhone to test (the simulator is not enough for serious testing, especially for the actual user

        • by dingen ( 958134 )

          Why? Maybe I want to sell through Apple's App store but also through my site directly and avoid their fees.

          You can't install apps from a website on an iPhone.

      • by rxmd ( 205533 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @08:59AM (#29655699) Homepage

        Your argument makes no sense at all. First of all, there are already lots of ways to build iPhone apps without using a Mac, like Unity 3D [unity3d.com] or MonoTouch [monotouch.net]. So you don't need a Mac, even without a JVM or Flash player.

        Regarding Unity3D, see the Unity for iPhone Requirements page: [unity3d.com]

        In order to license and use Unity iPhone Publishing, developers must meet the following requirements:

        • You must own Unity 2.x (Indie or Pro)
        • You must be an approved Apple Developer for the iPhone and install the iPhone SDK (requires Intel-based Mac running OSX 10.5.4 or later)

        And regarding MonoTouch, see the MonoTouch FAQ [monotouch.net]:

        What is MonoTouch?
        MonoTouch is a software development kit
        for Mac OS X that lets you use .NET programming languages to create native applications for Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch devices. [...]

        Do I need a Mac to use MonoTouch?
        MonoTouch requires a Mac and Apple's iPhone SDK to test on the emulator and deploy on the device.

        So no, those aren't ways to build OS X apps without a Mac. For someone who asks his parent poster to rant all he wants, but at least to make sense while doing so, you might check your facts a little better.

      • Do you have any idea what you're talking about?

      • You're seriously confused. The reason a full flash implementation does not exist on the iPhone is precisely because you wouldn't have to use the app store to use flash applications, *they don't have to be installed locally*. You do not have to store a flash application on your local filesystem. You can write quite complex and useful applications as flash (and applets if you enjoy a bit o' UI pain) where absolutely nothing is stored on the local filesystem. Settings, data, history, all easily stored on t

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Snocone ( 158524 )

      Flash (REAL, unchained and fettered, Flash) and Java do not exist on the iPhone for one simple reason: GREED.

      If a complete Flash Player and Java are on the iPhone, everyone can develop for the iPhone without an SDK, everyone can publish/sell applications without the crApp Store.

      Unfortunately, we can demonstrate your thesis incorrect by example.

      People are indeed developing for the iPhone without an SDK and publishing/selling applications without the crApp Store right now, using HTML5. I reviewed an example h [alexcurylo.com]

      • Actually, you haven't demonstrated anything except for a tendency to wax prosaic as if you were some great learned cove condescending to educate the poor unfortunates, such as myself. :)

        "People are indeed developing for the iPhone without an SDK and publishing/selling applications without the crApp Store right now, using HTML5" - Wow, you are proposing that application development in HTML is an acceptable alternative to application development in Java or Flash?

        Apparently you're a bit old to recall this, my

        • by Snocone ( 158524 )

          Apparently you're a bit old to recall this, my dear old man, but people have been building HTML applications for years and the results are terrible in comparison to what you can do in Flash or Java.

          And apparently, my dear young pup, you're not aware that HTML5 brings new capabilities, especially on the iPhone. To quote myself:

          "Our new MindBeam 'application' has animation, device rotation detection, native alerts, and so forth ... seriously, it's more polished and functional than a lot of native apps we've s

          • LOL - I'm quite aware of HTML5. The only positives, for application writing, that HTML5 has over Flash (I'm not a flash fan myself but it has its uses) is that you can use structured storage (Flash has unstructured/hackish storage.) All of the other 'pluses' you're referring to with HTML5 existed in Flash/Java ages ago.

            Your statement that "iPhone HTML5 apps are definitively superior to anything you can achieve in Flash or Java on any other platform" is patently ridiculous. Of course, given that you are o

            • by Snocone ( 158524 )

              Your statement that "iPhone HTML5 apps are definitively superior to anything you can achieve in Flash or Java on any other platform" is patently ridiculous

              I dropped a word there, I meant to say "browser platform". With that correction, I stand by the statement. Since your list of "don't haves" applied to WebKit on the iPhone is, in order, wrong, embarrassingly wrong, wrong as far as I can tell (but please, give me an example of Flash animation that can't be done better in hardware accelerated CSS3 and I'll

              • "give me an example of Flash animation that can't be done better in hardware accelerated CSS3" - Um... Weren't you talking about HTML 5? Or have you turned this into "any supported browser technology" means that browser apps are better than Java or Flash for applications? LOL. How many browser even support CSS3? How long has it been out? Anyhow, if you want an example of Flash animations that can't be better done in hardware accelerated CSS3 (you do realize that flash is hardware accelerated both at t

  • Palm seems to have no problem with it. The Palm Pre is going to be the first phone to support Flash:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpI6gA9cuME [youtube.com]
    http://www.precentral.net/adobe-flash-player-101-demod-pre [precentral.net]

    • <quote><p>Palm seems to have no problem with it. The Palm Pre is going to be the first phone to support Flash:</p></quote>
      The way you write this, it sounds like something positive.

      Seriously, I don't like the stronghold of Apple over the iPhone platform but if this prevents the poor iPhone users to ever have to witness the Flash "Experience", I think this is a good thing.

      Oh, an if you want video, there is a video player on the iPhone which can display streaming video. Flash is the wo
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mdwh2 ( 535323 )

        I love how things not being supported is twisted to be a good thing - we've seen it before: 3G, MMS, video, copy/paste. That last one in particular, it's amazing the lengths people went to to justify how the UI was improved by not being able to do something as simple as copy/paste, by talking about "new paradigms" (but not ever explaining what those were).

        The joke is that when the Iphone finally does add those new features, suddenly the argument that it was better off without them vanishes, and the news is

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by BasilBrush ( 643681 )

          it's amazing the lengths people went to to justify how the UI was improved by not being able to do something as simple as copy/paste, by talking about "new paradigms"

          It would be amazing if it was true. But it's not.

          What people did say was that all the various suggestions that people here and on blogs were making for how to do the UI were shit. And that Apple would probably do cut'n'paste in a future version when they came up with a good UI for it. Which is exactly what happened.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by markdavis ( 642305 )

        >The way you write this, it sounds like something positive.

        Well, it is both positive and negative. Personally, I *hate* what Flash does to web browsing, most of the time. It consumes tons of RAM, makes loading pages slow, eats bandwidth, eats CPU, lowers security, damages compatibility, restricts screen sizes, and most of all- makes animation while I am trying to READ.

        And on a phone, it will drain the battery like no tomorrow.

        But if they have the ability to turn it on/off or limit/control it's use, tha

    • So does that make all Windows Mobile phones somehow the second phone to support Flash, or.. what?

  • by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @09:15AM (#29655851) Homepage

    Number 1 rule to make sure something ships on Apple iPhone platform or even OS X is: Keep your mouth shut up about it. Especially if you do "workaround" kind of stuff. Look what they did to Google, Sun (ZFS).

    This announcement will not serve anything rather than thousands of trolls and fanboys not knowing a single thing about "Flash lite" kind of things working perfectly on Symbian/Win MO talk how bad Flash is and how it will eat their battery.

    They didn't understand the basic but secret reason about why a multimedia/app platform like Flash wasn't shipped with iPhone at first place. We, users have very good guesses.

    If I sound paranoid, I ask you what happened to ZFS after Sun CEO blogged about it before SJobs was able to announce it with his genius PR. There are no traces of ZFS on Snow Leopard nor its server. It is amazing that $1 shareware app authors knows how to deal with Apple but multi billion Adobe which somehow owes its existence to Apple does such lame PR announcements.

    Have fun with your "export to iPhone" menu option next year. Something tells me something will go wrong with the cunning plan.

    • by Phroggy ( 441 )

      Number 1 rule to make sure something ships on Apple iPhone platform or even OS X is: Keep your mouth shut up about it. Especially if you do "workaround" kind of stuff.

      Kinda hard to sell a product that you can't tell anybody about, isn't it?

  • After spending a month diving into the iPhone SDK and re-learning C NOW you tell me that I can make iPhone apps with Flash?

    Will iPhone apps built in Flash still feature Flash's terrible bitmap scaling and rotation? Will it still allow for sloppy (and dangerous) typing and memory operations? Probably not, I suppose. Still, I can't see myself developing in Flash (or .net for that matter) just because it's more familiar. Tools for jobs. If I want to make a game for the web, I'll use Flash. If I want to make

  • by sootman ( 158191 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @10:14AM (#29656603) Homepage Journal

    HanClinto was among a number of readers to send word that Adobe has worked around the inability to run Flash on iPhones and iPod Touch devices. Adobe has been trying to work with Apple for more than a year to get its Flash Player software running on Apple's products, but has said it needs more cooperation from Apple to get it done. Now Adobe has come up with a work-around.

    This does NOT let Flash content, as we know it, run on iPhone! For once in your miserable lives, editors, (and maybe submitters, too), READ THE DAMN ARTICLE! [adobe.com] Last line of the first paragraph, IN BOLD: These aren't Flash SWF files, they're native iPhone apps.

    Getting these into the app store might be tricky, though.

    And I HATE this whiny editorializing BULLSHIT! Again from TFA, THIRD FUCKING PARAGRAPH, first sentence: As of today, participants in the Adobe pre-release program have submitted 8 applications and all of them have been accepted into the App Store.
     
    Slashdot eds, this is the worst submission I've seen in a while. kdawson, do you know how to read, or click on a link?
     
    For anyone who actually cares to know details, there's more info here. [adobe.com]

    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      I always thought that "kdawson" was just an Alan Smithee [wikipedia.org] type pseudonym that /. editors put on stories they were particularly ashamed of.
  • Adobe have basically announced a way to compile Flash to native iPhone apps. This should mean that all their future product releases that author Flash should hopefully have similar functionality. (I'm being selfish and thinking Flex here.)

    The next logical step is for Adobe to allow you to deploy natively to other Phone OS. So as a Flex(read Flash, well AS3 ) developer I should be able to write an application, and then deploy to Air, browser, iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile. Do you realise the im

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Yes, they completely see the potential... insofar as Adobe would love to see entire phones running with Flash as the front-end, and have demoed such devices (from Asia) already. Adobe wants to rule the smartphone market just like everybody else. The question is whether Adobe really has more clout than everybody else.

      • I remember seeing Flash on a smart phone/Palm device like...I just realized no shit it was 10 years ago at a Macromedia User Conference. Either the company doesn't really want it as bad as you're suggesting or they just aren't capable of getting it done. Maybe the problems are technical - maybe they lack the business acumen, I don't know. Personally, as a general rule, I think Adobe seems to love cool new stuff, but generally has poor follow-through & implementation.
  • can do this too. Haxe is a pretty neat language, it can compile to swf, Windows exe and iPhone. Plus you can run the compiled iphone apps in the simulator. Haxe is also significantly better than Actionscript 3.0 even if you just use it to write for the flash player- it can access the fast memory functions you can get with Android, and supports inline functions.

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