Tag Archives: Flash

An Open Letter to Adobe

by thomasfitzgerald on 13. May, 2010 in Apple, Design

Dear Adobe

You’ve been letting off a lot of steam lately, perhaps understandably, about Apple refusing to support Flash on it’s iPhone OS platforms. You’ve repeatedly stated that there should be no problem with Flash running on these platforms and that Apple’s refusal is political rather than technical so I have one simple request for you: Put your money where your mouth is and show us Flash running on an iPhone, an iPod touch or an iPad. Seriously. Sure you won’t get it through the App store but there’s no reason why you can’t develop an App that at least demonstrates that it’s possible on an iPhone OS Device. I’m not talking about Applications developed using Flash Packager, I’m talking about flash itself.

By trying to claim that this is all about Apple threatening freedom, while ignoring comments from other companies, such as ARM, Microsoft and Opera you are associating a quality brand like Adobe’s with cheap Fox News-esque politics of phoney outrage. If you want to continually contend that Apple’s motives are political rather than technical then it’s time to “put up or shut up” and prove your point rather than expect everyone to believe your rhetoric.

Yours Sincerely
A once Loyal Adobe Fan.

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Something Fishy in Flash Town

by thomasfitzgerald on 12. Apr, 2010 in Apple, Design, iPad, iPhone, iPod

There’s something fishy about this whole flashgate saga that’s been going on for the last week or so. Ever since Apple published the new terms and agreements for iPhone OS4, the web has exploded in outrage. Much of that outrage stems from the very public temper tantrum by Adobe’s flash evangelist Lee Brimlow. His reaction, and those of many Adobe supporters could be best summed up as shock, disbelief and anger. It’s the shock part that I have a problem with. To me, that reaction is somewhat suspicious, especially from an Adobe employee. Why? For the simple reason that I can’t believe that they didn’t see this coming.

Apple made it pretty clear that they didn’t want Flash on the iPhone. So Adobe goes and does an end run around Apple and announce, not only a way to bring flash to the platform in a round about way, but to bypass Apple’s developer tools all together. They didn’t do this with Apple’s approval, they sprung it on them like they did everyone else. They could have worked with Apple to let flash help create interfaces or animations that worked with Apple’s developer tools and helped developers, but instead they tried to bypass Apple all together. Anyone who’s ever followed Apple knows that that’s not something you want to do, so I really can’t believe that anyone at Adobe is shocked by this. They musty have known that Apple wasn’t going to take this lying down. Lee Brimlow expresses his anger at Cupertino by saying “Screw you Apple”, but Flash CS5 was already a big “Screw You” to Apple and Adobe knows it.

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All of this has happened before, All of this will happen again

by thomasfitzgerald on 11. Apr, 2010 in Apple, iPad, iPhone, iPod

I’m getting kind of tired of all the rhetoric that is been written about the whole Apple / Flash thing. I realise too that I’m beginning to sound like an Apple fanboy. Mind you, that’s the only reason some people get away with writing what they want, because they pre-emptively label anyone who disagrees with them an Apple fanboy. As per usual when people are talking about Apple, they collectively lose their fricken’ minds. Take this wonderful piece from an article on Tech Crunch:

…. The iPhone faces a growing threat from Google’s Android phones, which are the PCs of the mobile world. Only Apple makes the iPhone, but many phone manufacturers make Android phones just like many PC makers produce Windows PCs. Slowly but surely, those Android phones are getting better.

Sound familiar? Replace Android Phones with Mp3 Players and iPhone with iPod. Apple’s so called walled garden we keep hearing about that’s going to destroy the company? Why that sounds awfully like how Apple not licensing it’s DRM to other companies was going to destroy the company, or how not licensing OS X was going to destroy the company.

Sorry Erick Schonfeld of Tech Crunch, Jobs isn’t the one ignoring history, you are. Your article is just selectively handpicking events to justify your point.

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Flash: King of the Impossible

by thomasfitzgerald on 09. Mar, 2010 in Apple, iPhone

Interesting article from Glenn Fleishman on Flash and the iPhone. Of particular interest is his point that Flash is unavailable on many other smartphone platforms and yet Adobe only loudly complains about the iPhone. It’s a good read.

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New York Times on why there’s no flash in the iPad

by thomasfitzgerald on 01. Feb, 2010 in Apple, Internet, iPad

The New York Times has a good piece on why the iPad doesn’t have flash

Numerous developers and executives that I interviewed for my story said there was a trend toward offering users an alternative to Flash video, the predominant video standard online, in the form of HTML5, an open standard.

Senior-level managers from many of the top video sites online, including YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv and Flickr, all agreed that video online is starting to splinter, and as some test out HTML5 for video distribution, many will begin offering both formats as the iPad makes its way onto the market.

(Read Why the iPad Web Demo Was Full of Holes – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.)

It seems obvious to me (and to many others) that flash’s days of prominence are over. More and more websites are using css and javascript with dhtml to produce the kind of sites that would have previously required flash. Coupled with the numerous video heavy sites that have begun to offer alternatives to Flash you can easily see that developers are starting to look in another direction. John Gruber has a very good piece on this too that’s worth checking out.

I think for all the moaning about the iPad not having flash, I think the bigger concern is what effect will the iPad have on Flash. If it’s even moderately successful (and it will be) then you’ll start to see Flash disappearing from web sites. Given how poorly flash often performs, and how good some of the alternatives now are, I don’t see that as a bad thing.

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