Comments on: Adobe's Open Screen Project: Bigger Than the iPhone

By: Analyst Firm Thinks ARM Will Beat Intel on UltraMobile Devices – GigaOM

Analyst Firm Thinks ARM Will Beat Intel on UltraMobile Devices – GigaOM — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:07:43 +0000

[...] its instruction set. Getting Android, which runs on ARM, onto a variety of devices, and making sure Adobe Flash runs on ARM-based chips are what will help the company gain favor with device makers and the end [...]

By: MIPS Joins the Push to Move Android Beyond Phones – GigaOM

MIPS Joins the Push to Move Android Beyond Phones – GigaOM — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:00:27 +0000

[...] is also using CES to tout its new membership in Adobe’s Open Screen Project, which aims to expand support for Flash beyond the traditional Internet to phones and other connected devices. The 18-month-old project has [...]

By: Adobe Flashes Its Mobile Cards With New Releases

Adobe Flashes Its Mobile Cards With New Releases — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:12:55 +0000

[...] 10.1, which was unveiled last month, is designed to run on platforms including Google’s Android, Research In Motion’s [...]

By: Cynergy MultiTouch Calendar for AIR 2.0 : The Computus Engine

Cynergy MultiTouch Calendar for AIR 2.0 : The Computus Engine — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:53:25 +0000

[...] There were lots of new feature announcements at Adobe MAX this year but one of the most exciting was support for multi-touch in Flash Player 10.1. This along with the likes of accelerometer are paving the way for a massive push onto smartphones. You won't be able to buy a smartphone next year that doesn't come with a Flash Player… okay, maybe just one. [...]

By: les madras

les madras — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:53:48 +0000

i think the importance of flash for mobile is stated accurately in the post. of course, google boosters might disagree, but flash is bloody good despite adobe’s bumbling business execution.

By: Mishan Kontroll

Mishan Kontroll — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:45:10 +0000

Yeah, given how bad Flash still is on PCs after all these years, you have to wonder how well Adobe can do on mobile devices. It’s no wonder Apple wants to keep Flash off the iPhone, where its CPU-hogging and poor performance would probably drain your battery pretty fast. To keep my laptop from running its fans full-blast and draining the battery, I have to close any browser windows with Flash trash in them — probably not what websites want users to do.

I listened to a favorite radio program yesterday using Flash-based MP3 streaming, and the damn browser was using 50% of my CPU! Just to play back MP3! I would have switched to some other stream so I could work a little faster, but KCRW offers only Flash.

Flash video playback is astonishingly taxing of CPU resources: a YouTube clip uses a lot of CPU time whereas a standard def DVD or DivX hardly makes my computer break a sweat.

By: Tim F.

Tim F. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:39:51 +0000

Pushing money at PR doesn’t tell me anything about technology, sorry.

ARM could tell me directly, “Flash is the only thing that makes our platform viable,” and I would still find the statement “If ARM hadn’t embraced Flash, it’s a good bet that the web experience on gadgets using ARM chips would have turned consumers and, thus, device makers, off” completely nonsensical.

Everyone would abandon ARM in smartphones and other handheld devices without Flash, really? Someone is actually saying that besides Adobe?

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:53:31 +0000

Tim, ARM has spent a lot of PR effort explaining how Flash is one of the key technologies it has to support to make sure its architecture can match x86 when it comes to delivering a good consumer web experience.

By: Tim F.

Tim F. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:46:46 +0000

Meh. Seems like some of your conclusions are reaching. Should I really assume that Google thinks Flash isn’t only important but is also their gateway into new consumer-oriented devices besides phones, or is it simpler to think that it was a no brainer to join in on support when Flash and ARM have built support for just about every device they will be on; when they are trying to push something called the Open Handset Alliance, it’s probably not a bad idea to support the Open Screen Alliance; and becuse it’s a cheap bullet point advantage over their strongest competitor in this space, Apple.

Also, I don’t see how a bunch of phone manufacturers supporting the group proves that ARM believes Flash is important to its success thus they must bring it to all of their devices. It shows me that pretty much all of the phone manufacturers have standardized on ARM and that ARM is important to any device manufacturer, but it doesn’t tell me how important Flash is to ARM. Etc…

By: Gerard Byrne

Gerard Byrne — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:32:25 +0000

Placing “lack of support for flash” and “delivering an inferior experience for mobile users” in the same sentence is an example of oxymoron.

Regurgitating from a corporate press release (as in “while the iPhone is an important mobile platform, the Open Screen Project, and bringing Flash to everything, is a far bigger play”) signifies an entire lack of understanding as to where Google and Apple are heading with HTML5 and CSS. Flash is so yesterday. None of the key players (including Microsoft) are going to submit to Adobe controlling the content delivery standard.

Lets review in 2 years time. This article is going to look silly in terms of its appreciation of where the real action is heading.