Comments on: Adobe Hopes Wallaby Can Vault Apple’s Flash Blockade

By: Jenn

Jenn — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:18:25 +0000

I agree 100% on all points – especially the lazy software development.

By: Matthew Fabb

Matthew Fabb — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:09:29 +0000

Yup and there’s now a lot of very successful iOS apps made with Flash. However, you have to go through the iTunes store, there is no way to reach users through the browser. Now web developers will be able to push Flash content to iOS users (mainly banner ads) through the browser.

By: Matthew Fabb

Matthew Fabb — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:05:13 +0000

Note Adobe did open source their ActionScript virtual machine, which Mozilla used for their JavaScript engine for Firefox. The latest speed boost in Firefox is a big part thanks to Adobe.

As opening up their rendering engine, like Apple did with canvas, I don’t think it would have worked. One of the main reasons that Flash will never be completely open source, is that Adobe use pieces of license code themselves. However, the SWF format is an open format, so that if Apple wanted to create their own version of the Flash Player they could.

Instead Adobe created the Open Screen Project. Anyone can join and then get the source code to the Flash Player and help optimize it for a specific device. Adobe wants to see Flash on every device, so they are pretty open for anyone to join. Apple could have joined and worked with Adobe to optimize Flash for iOS, but Apple wasn’t interested.

By: The CW

The CW — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:56:17 +0000

Really? Because I’m fairly tech savvy (seeing as how I’ve been developing interactive media for 20 years and developing Flash applications for 15) and I’m pretty sure Flash is atrocious. It is the dominant meta-platform currently but it is a perfect example of lazy software development It is abusive of resources and full of idiopathic bugs.

It works… but robust and efficient? No.

By: Mike Kelly

Mike Kelly — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:44:25 +0000

Adapt or die….It’s Steve’s world and we just code for it ;-)

By: traveller

traveller — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:57:52 +0000

Why does this sound like a fluff piece for Adobe? It doesn’t even mention the fact that Flash consumes so much power as a reason for the ban on iDevices.

By: reelfernandes

reelfernandes — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:44:23 +0000

Flash is misunderstood by non tech savvy persons too often. It’s a much more robust & efficient web development platform than HTML-JS-CSS. Write once, don’t worry about browser fragmention. HTML5 doesn’t match features yet, but as it evolves in complexity so will the web apps creates with HTML & the same volume of crashes & bugs will be had. Long live Flash, Molehill is amazing.

By: html5talk

html5talk — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:27:29 +0000

Doesn’t the Flash AIR extension let you publish from Flash CS5 to iPhone?
labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/

By: The CW

The CW — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:46:44 +0000

“In one way, Adobe might have to take this route: after all, short of an antitrust lawsuit, it can’t force Apple to support a system it doesn’t like.”

I’m trying to imagine an antitrust suit that would result in Adobe getting Apple to support Flash. I suspect that scenario doesn’t exist. Adobe has never had a Flash runtime that worked on a mobile device, there are plenty of other mobile devices that want to support a Flash runtime (when one exists), and there are other platforms beyond mobile devices. There is no scenario where Apple’s actions prevent Flash from thriving.

The question I have is… Why bring it up?

By: NormM

NormM — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:19:19 +0000

Up until very recently Adobe had no full implementation of Flash for mobile devices. In fact, Xoom just launched without Flash being ready for it. This slowness is one of the main things that kept Flash off iOS.