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.
Why would this be tricky? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Whats the issue Apple have with Flash? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Whats the issue Apple have with Flash? (Score:2, Interesting)
Adobe treats mac users as second class citizens thus treating many of their power users like dirt. If you think like Steve Jobs, this is an insult to Apple since they went and did want industry members like Adobe have long demanded of them and built a better OS than Windows (much better) and built really solid hardware, the iPod Touch/iPhone anyways, and then been plagued with monopolists like Adobe/Microsoft shutting them out. If history is a lesson, (think iWork) Apple will soon deliver a native version of Inkscape and dump resources into Pixelmator, and start bundling them with Final Cut studio and new iMacs (well a trial version in Pixelmator's case). Apple somewhat reasonably demands more, Adobe and Microsoft refuse to/can't deliver so Apple just raises the bar... this is capitalism at its best; even if the Google Voice fiasco is capitalism at its worst.
Adobe, don't you know Apple? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Do you still have to... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 here [alexcurylo.com], ponying up the big $4.95 over the web to do the complete non-crApp Store buying experience, and was quite impressed indeed with how native it appeared.
As a matter of fact, apparently you're a bit young to remember this, my son, but for the first year after the iPhone was released there was no SDK and developers were told that writing HTML apps, as the above cited people are making a business out of now, would be the only way to develop for the iPhone. And although the release of the SDK rather overpowered it, last year a whole metric fluffton of various hooks and APIs were added specifically to make HTML apps like the above examples more powerful, more native looking, and all around better. ... so, looks like your reasoning doesn't hold up. Apple not only approves but is actively promoting the development of non-SDK native-appearing HTML5 apps. Yet, somehow, Flash and Java remain off the phone. Now why, oh why, could that be? Begins with an "S" and ends with a "k", that would be my guess!
Re:Why would this be tricky? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not seeing the wood for the trees. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Palm Pre (Score:3, Interesting)
>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, that will be the best of both worlds.
>Oh, an if you want video, there is a video player on the iPhone
Well, WebOS/Pre, Android, etc, they all have that- Youtube player, video player, stream player. This is about Flash 10.1 on a phone web browser.