Decoding Adobe's Big Device Push 181
nerdyH writes "Adobe yesterday chummed the waters around Flash and AIR as cross-platform app dev environments for mobile devices. It promised runtimes for several popular mobile OSes, including WinMo, Symbian, Palm webOS, and Android, with future RIM/Blackberry support hinted as well. Moreover, it reiterated its commitment to the Open Screen Project, an Adobe-led industry group that, if you deconstruct its name and look at its membership roster, appears tactically focused on enabling hardware acceleration of Flash/AIR on devices, as part of a larger strategy of making the runtimes ubiquitous as UI development frameworks for essentially every computer-like device with a user interface."
Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:5, Interesting)
With HTML5's video, audio and canvas elements, there will be less and less need for Flash in the future on the web. It seems like Adobe is realizing this as well and has decided to move the focus of Flash from mere embedded objects on web pages to a way of easily creating full, rich and cross-platform applications for both PC's and phones.
This coiuld work out pretty well for them in the end. I must admit clicking a game together using Flash and publishing it to every major platform sounds more attractive than the more traditional ways of developing software, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking this.
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Any CCNA should know that the IOS is already in flash.
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Awesome. I can't wait until they partner with Cisco and rewrite IOS in Flash :P
Any CCNA should know that the IOS is already in flash.
But not the configuration....
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Okay. Cisco 800. You go to it in your browser, and get a web page. This web page pops up a login window, which pops up a Java applet which will do many of your tasks. However, if you try to do a certain set of the tasks, it'll pop up a (new) web browser to take you to an old-style-Cisco in-browser web-based interface. With a separate login, if I recall correctly.
I'll take a Flash UI over that, I think.
More attractive for you... (Score:3, Interesting)
I must admit clicking a game together using Flash and publishing it to every major platform sounds more attractive
Slap it together and call it a day!
Never mind it doesn't take advantage of platform specific features. I'm sure users wouldn't care about THAT at all. I'm sure your sales will be just fine...
Sometimes easier things are just easier, not better.
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Why wouldn't it take advantage of platform specific features? Flash's new "export to iPhone" function makes use of things like multitouch and the accelerometer just fine.
But that's building a game targeted at one platform, a platform with multitouch and accelerometer (which would include the G1).
The original poster was talking about writing a game once, to deploy everywhere - which means not taking full advantage of the platform specific features, because you have to rely on the lowest common denominator of
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PC games have, for decades now, been written to use locally available hardware when present and to handle different screen resolutions. Why must Flash be any different?
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Hate to break it to you, but Flash has vector graphics; if anything, it makes it easier adapting for different resolutions. The only real difference is the input method, but you can use System.Capabilities to see what's available - accelerometer, multitouch, pointer, etc. and fall back.
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In general I would like to see Flash to be competitive, hardware acceleration is very
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Eff that. I'll be much happier just making sure Flash content works at all on any of my mobile devices. Windows Mobile support for Flash has been on the "yes, please" list for about a decade now... The last version of Flash for Windows Mobile/PocketPC was, I think, a crippled, broken version of 6 (possibly 7) that doesn't work with Youtube or any other streaming video site, doesn't handle user input properly, doesn't work in anything except Pocket IE, and frequently just doesn't work at all (or crashes out
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Re:Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bejeweled has also undergone heavy redevelopment, as do all popcap games. They are "demoed" on the web as flash games but what you buy on Win, Mac, iPhone, Palm, Xbox, etc, is developed for the platform.
Flash has it's uses, but as a cash purchase I don't think I'll hop on board.
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Well the main reason PopCap had to develop native versions for different platforms of their Flash games, was that stuff like described in TFA didn't exist then.
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There is that. There is also the notion that in a few short years most PC users won't be using PC's anymore. If Adobe (or anyone else for that matter) want to remain relevant to that group they're going to have to figure out exactly this cross platform issue before cell phones start driving external displays.
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There is that. There is also the notion that in a few short years most PC users won't be using PC's anymore. If Adobe (or anyone else for that matter) want to remain relevant to that group they're going to have to figure out exactly this cross platform issue before cell phones start driving external displays.
Oh good. the death of the desktop is nigh.... again.. Let me guess... We will all be using iPhones right?
Re:Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:5, Interesting)
With HTML5 not being supported by MS, and only certain codecs being supported by Apple, the video tag isn't worth shit, unfortunately.
Besides, flash video players are all about the bloat - look at youtube/hulu, you've got captions, annotations, ads, menus at the end, etc.
I haven't looked into the other new tags, but flash for video should have died years ago.
Last I checked embed src="file.ext" worked fine, and my browser loaded a plugin/full app to handle whatever it was. (Though it's not actually part of the spec, is it?)
It wasn't pretty, and it just played the video. But that's all I want. Sadly, everyone else loves "teh web 2.0" and demands all the bits and bobs.
We've had streaming protocols for ages that worked directly in the browser, or by opening up a media app. We can always improve the protocol and the codec without touching flash.
The problem is it's not about the content anymore. The content is the lure. No one wants to serve up site.com/videos/video1.mp4 through straight html. They want you to go to site.com, see ads, click around, add comments, see a list of related and sponsored videos, and maybe watch the actual video.
This is why flash (and similar) will live on, regardless of the alternatives.
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Google ChromeFrame [google.com] will take care of recalcitrant IE. As far as Apple vs Mozilla goes, you can easily support both Firefox/Chrome/Opera/Safari with two seperate video encodes (ogg/h.264) and some browser capability detection. I know i've seen some very elegant solutions even with the current draft state of HTML5.
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So, what you're actually saying is that most people on the net will only be able to watch these videos if they install something they have been told isn't safe?
The problem is obviously not a technical one - I would assume the only people who use IE on this site are forced to by a workplace where they don't have admin permissions - but a simple statement that things generally take a very long time to succeed if they have to fight against the looming behemoth that is Microsoft.
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That is no excuse; for those of you who are feeling oppressed try http://www.portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com].*
They are so beautiful, I'm thinking of making this the default way to set up a system with useable software. Love portableapps.com.
* Okay, yes there are some places where even portableapps aren't possible. Most will work though.
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2 seperate video encodes may mean petabytes and a gigantic grid of video transcoding devices/farms in certain cases.
All for? Mr. Open Source doesn't like patented codecs even if they are documented and were designed by AV industry themselves. While companies decide whether to go VP7 or stick with H264, they invite them to use VP3! It is amazingly similar to that Linux/Open phone which had the genius idea of not including 3G in this age because it was patented.
Besides "slogan like" names, it is damn VP3 an o
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It's not the player, it's the upgrade cycle (Score:3, Insightful)
HTML5 is kindof awesome, but even the most awesome technology is limited by the number of people who can use it. Unless the W3C or Microsoft or Google or the Mozilla Foundation manage to convince the world to upgrade their browsers with the speed that Adobe can upgrade the install base of the Flash Player, HTML5 is always going to play second fiddle.
Now according to Adobe, Flash Player 10 is at 94% adoption in mature markets, and that's about... what, 10-12 months after release? The HTML 5 spec was formally
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Flash 10 can play flash pre 1 content (Score:3, Insightful)
I was amazed when I saw current Flash player (10) could play "futuresplash" the original flash files all fine even with added hardware acceleration.
To have such backwards compatibility without adding bulk to a plugin which is in version 10 is the true secret why web designers love flash.
Here is the futuresplash demo from 1995 http://www.4dm.com/files/tech/blue.htm [4dm.com]
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I'd rather people used SVG animation for games and video rather than putting it in HTML, seriously - I've been rather underwhelmed by the canvas and video tags and they tend to be as cpu hungry as flash.
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"With HTML5's video, audio and canvas elements, there will be less and less need for Flash in the future on the web."
I agree. But if Adobe were smart (and I don't hold out much hope), they would develop a new application as a successor to Flash that would allow designers with minimal programming skills to create Flash-like content and save it as pure HTML5, Canvas, and Javascript.
Actually, I'd really prefer it if Apple made such an app. But whoever does so first (and does a good job of it) is going to own t
Hopefully... (Score:4, Interesting)
...they will learn something from squeezing Flash onto these embedded devices that can be used to help make the desktop edition less resource intensive.
ew (Score:3, Funny)
Literally?
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In before lasers
Life in the slow lane (Score:3, Insightful)
Noooo. It's bad enough that Flash slows down and eats system resources in Windows, Mac's and Linux, now they want to inflict the same on underpowered mobile devices. That's sick!
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Yes, because all of the previous HTML implementations were so nice to use and performant.
Oh and you never have to test them individually in each browser to make sure things work... right?
perhaps, but if not flash, Silverlight'll do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably, if Adobe doesn't establish Flash as a cross-platform dev environment for mobiles, then Microsoft will manage to foist Silverlight as it's own bloated slow lane for mobile devices. And the same devs that give us IE-only web apps will start producing Silverlight-only stuff for mobiles.
Now maybe Miguel would disagree, but I think it's better to have a truly cross-platform bloated enviroment than to have a single-platform bloated environment (I assume Silverlight/Mono is at least close to Flash in bloat). Sure, I'd take streamlined before bloat, but cross-platform trumps streamlined.
By the way, aren't Android apps based on Java? Since when is that a paragon of efficiency? Or does Google use some kind of 'compiled to machine code' Java variant? Likewise WebOS apps - aren't they largely Javascript? Who said mobile device platforms weren't bloated already?
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I really hope all the advertisements go to Silverlight.
And I hope for FlashBlock-for-the-Mobiles - but this seems to be harder.
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Android apps are all pretty much Java-only.
Android's development kit re-encodes the standard Java class files for the Dalvik virtual machine [wikipedia.org] which makes them smaller and faster. The standard Java VM has stack based parameter passing, but Dalvik's format recodes it to use registers for parameter passing wherever possible. It also makes constants much smaller - if you're only using numbers from 0-255, why store them in 64 bits?
As for the standard class library, Android implements a custom subset of the Java s
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The only reason why Flash eats system resources like the undead is because the implementations are horrible. They're poorly implemented. Take the Linux Flash plugin, for instance: instead of doing video properly by using Xrender and EXA (or even XAA), it uses OpenGL for video. It does things Xrender should be doing in software, and adds an additional several levels of complexity and overhead to OGL rendering.
I'm not saying Flash is lightweight, but certainly it's not a problem endemic to the toolkit and can
What's the point of Flash today (Score:2, Interesting)
What can you do with Flash that you can't do with html5?
Re:What's the point of Flash today (Score:5, Insightful)
What can you do with Flash that you can't do with html5?
Tie yourself to a vendor
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> Adobe is pretty much at the top of the list for exploits
Well duh. Flash is on, what, 95%+ of all desktop web-browsing systems. When Windows + IE ruled the web-browsing world, criminals looked for exploits there. Now that other browsers and OS versions are more popular, Flash is a more attractive lowest-common-denominator.
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What can you do with Flash that you can't do with html5?
Play existing Flash content.
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I think you'll find that's a bonus.
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I think you'll find that's a bonus.
Lots and lots of fun little games out there are made with Flash. So... no.
Little games become giant when added (Score:2)
Those little games you talk about nears a billion dollar industry which actually saved Real Networks from going down the drain with Real Arcade.
Funny thing is trying to explain it to a slashdot poster as you do. They think poor content provider/game developer morons are sticking with Flash because they have no clue about "standard mpeg" or "svg".
BTW I know some PS3 owners who installed Linux/PS3+Gnash+IBM Java just to play those tiny Flash/Java games on big screen.
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Funny thing is trying to explain it to a slashdot poster as you do....
I think you misunderstood where I was going with my post. I wasn't ragging on Flash or suggesting alternatives.
Re:What's the point of Flash today (Score:4, Insightful)
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HELL NO! And furthermore, even if Flash penetration were 100% and they fixed the bug where the player captures my Firefox url and search bar shortcut keystrokes, I wouldn't develop for it. In my 14 years of web development, the only Flash I've ever created was a hidden music player on my otherwise-DHTML animated personal homepage. As soon as HTML5 embedded sound supports multiple simultaneous audio streams, you can bet I'm turfing that bullshit. Long live the open web.
Re:What's the point of Flash today (Score:5, Insightful)
What can you do with Flash that you can't do with html5? Have your application run across many mobile devices, if Adobe has their way.
There is no technical reason that we can't have an open source, widely accepted standard for displaying animations and multimedia content over the web. We don't need a proprietary application such as Flash any more than we need one for displaying HTML.
However, Adobe has a lot of momentum and clout. Meanwhile, the browser developers can't even agree on a single standard for embedded video. The "Open" Screen Project is a big push to extend the life of a closed source, locked down technology. If most mobile devices support Flash, and html5 support is spotty, most developers will use Flash. If most developers use Flash, most mobile device makers won't be too concerned about fully implementing html5.
We have an opportunity right now to see html5 and other open standards take hold, but it is also an opportunity for Adobe to extend their grasp. I hope that real openness wins.
Re:What's the point of Flash today (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no technical reason that we can't have an open source, widely accepted standard for displaying animations and multimedia content over the web.
Good post, but the most important factor isn't even a "technical" issue.
Flash's real strength is on the content-creation side, and the fact that most Flash is generated by "designers" not "developers". All the HTML5 specs in the world won't displace Flash if they require a team of Javascript/SVG gurus to use. There needs to be designer software on the same level as Flash, and that's not a trivial problem.
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Actually, I'm not so sure that making a good IDE for something that supports nearly the same as flash does for html5 and js WOULD be that big a problem. I used to develop in flash a great deal 3 years ago, but I have been doing web programming since then. (mostly php, mysql, but I am really good with javascript as well)
I don't see why, with all the capability we ALREADY have with javascript and html5, couldn't make an IDE for making similar content in a application that is browser/web based and is nearly
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I agree, authoring tool is a huge factor. A flash-the-application work-alike for multimedia, IMHO, is the open-source holy grail.
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As if there aren't a huge number of "developers" who are completely ignorant of UI design? I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
They never update their browsers to have features (Score:2)
Will the mobile device vendors except Apple who is a complete genius to have a single line of model and a method of easily falling back of features ship "updated browser" to their line of 3 years of different devices? They never do.
Vendors like Opera, who makes their money with browsers on mobile can do such a huge task but in return, they would ask for money. Try to explain to Nokia execs that their "webkit" browser is a disgrace and worst possible way of using webkit framework on any OS/device and they sh
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Block it with the FlashBlock addon.
Re:What's the point of Flash today (Score:5, Informative)
Er, it sounds like you haven't heard of canvas... (Score:3)
Really, I've yet to hear a serious answer to what you can do with flash that you can't in modern javascript.
No. (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason SVG isn't/wasn't a workable solution is that IE doesn't support it. That's not an issue on mobile devices.
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What can you do with Flash that you can't do with html5?
Piss off iPhone fanboys?
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Click your user interface into existence and have it work identically on a half dozen platforms, for starters. With HTML5, you've got to write it - by hand - and hack a bunch of crude nonsense together to get it to work on multiple browsers.
Not saying I like it, but it's true.
Where do you not have a web browser? (Score:2)
In this day and age, anywhere you could use media rich applications, you have a web browser.
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My Chumby [chumby.com] disagrees. Qt with Webkit doesn't fit on its internal storage, but its USP is a flash player.
New license (Score:4, Interesting)
Certain projects shouldn't fork. Sun wouldn't open up Java for the longest time, because they didn't want forks of Java, and they didn't want to repeat what they went through with Microsoft.
I propose a new license that operates on a few basic principles.
1 - You can redistribute and modify the source code.
2 - You may compile the original source code, and even compile modified versions for personal use.
3 - You may not redistribute modified binaries.
In this scenario, users can compile themselves, test, fix bugs, write patches, etc. They can submit patches upstream, but upstream still largely controls the project and prevents major forks. You would still attract community developers.
I think a license like this would work well for Flash.
The possibility fo forks is necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes a maintainer refuses to give up a project, but refuses to continue meaningful development. Consider the X.org fork.
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Consider C-Kermit, wu-imapd, djbdns, and daemontools. While Dan Bernstein has relented, the owners of the other packages have not, and they've basically evaporated from typical distributions, and even Dan Bernstein's djbdns and daemontools have basically fallen by the wayside.
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and even Dan Bernstein's djbdns and daemontools have basically fallen by the wayside.
At least I guess some good came of it then.
Hopefully, qmail can be added to that list as well.
The cross-compilation multiverse (Score:4, Interesting)
I could be wrong, but..
Unity3d.com is probably doing what Adobe plans to already, except they're using .NET. Cross-compiling code into real iPhone applications. I haven't dug too deeply into how Unity3d is doing it, but it seems pretty clear -- you can write your code in .NET with some pseudo-alternative languages like 'Boo' (python), and it makes you a nice iPhone binary that'll pass Apple's deployment criteria.
Considering Adobe has the time, money, and smarts to do it, don't be surprised when their 'Program Actionscript for the Iphone!' system is a very tightly defined API coupled with the iPhone framework that is cross-compiling..
Before I gave up on Perl, the assertion that Parrot would be some fancy answer to everyone's programming problems by allowing you to program in any language you wanted. I somewhat scoffed at the idea, but more recently as I've been working with ARM processors and doing a lot of cross-compiling work I can understand why it's an important idea that will soon be second nature to us.
If I could buy stock in Unity3D right now I would, because those guys nailed it. They just need to scale up and out of just the 3d game market.
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Unity is nice, but the end result is massive bloat. It's a nice way for a developer or company to get into the iPhone market without having to learn Objective C, but I don't think they've 'nailed it.'
I've seen extremely simple applications take 18 - 24 MB space on an iPhone. That's with no textures, no graphics no nothing except basic 3D objects being rendered. An equivalent app developed in Objective C takes 10% - 25% of that.
18 - 24MB doesn't seem like a lot until you think about the fact that all that i
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And I forgot to mention that Unity doesn't provide access to native library calls. So, for instance, there's no way to bring up the iPhone keyboard from within a Unity app. This could very well be changing -- and may have already changed, but last I knew Unity apps on iPhone were severely crippled by this.
But that's just a symptom of the real problem with using Unity as the basis for development -- you're relying on a closed platform from third-party with relatively low vested interest in the platform. If a
This is a great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for the Adobe part.
And that Flash thing.
How about you get it right on the desktop Adobe? (Score:5, Insightful)
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10.6 only and it is not a secret (Score:2)
I bet all my powerpc macs saying it will be only possible with 10.6.x and not pre 10.6.
Only Snow Leopard offers the interface of doing that thing and of course, it won't stop people from blaming Adobe when it ships :)
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Eh, the current Linux version does that already - "fully offloads h264 decoding to the GPU" - via OpenGL. It's just that it's the wrong way to do it due to all the layers it's got to go through to get there. It sounds nice, but I suspect that the article is just marketing buzz.
If 10.1 offered any significant improvements on the desktop, there'd be useful beta builds not only available right now but also in wide use by the geek community.
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Clearly they have pulled developers from the Flash-optimization-team-for-non-windows as well as the optimize-size-of-acrobat teams to get this to work.
I know who to blame on that CPU usage (Score:2)
Let me tell the reason you get 80% CPU usage while doing a simple(!) thing as playing a 480P SD embedded file.
Apple didn't provide application/codec developers any way to access GPU features existing since 2004 as "hardware h264 decoding". They even couldn't access them themselves until Snow Leopard. In Snow Leopard, perhaps Flash player in current major version or minor update, separate tree will have 10% CPU usage but NOT the earlier OS X versions. Also if there is a XCode forced issue like "build for 10.
The proof is in the pudding... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and Adobe claimed they would have flash on Android this Fall.
October is here. Now they say next year.
I am not hopeful that they can get flash on Android. Possibly they are waiting for better devices so they don't have to shoehorn it into the G1, which could use more RAM, but it is what it is.
In fact, I predict, no Flash for the G1 ever. And many of the other platforms as well. Adoby wants to FUD the developers and keep HTML5 on the shelf as long as possible, since stuff like Canvas will pretty much eat their lunch and dinner if they don't watch out.
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Flash is indeed running on Android already [engadget.com]. Just not on the G1, unfortunately.
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Look at it on the bright side. At least you're not stuck waiting for it to come out on iPhone.
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The G1 isn't Android, and it's not a platform. Android is the platform. The G1 is the device. Android has Flash. The version of Android with Flash hasn't been ported to the G1.
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"The version of Android with Flash hasn't been ported to the G1."
Like I said. Flash on the G1? Never. Certainly not now. My point exactly, thank you for confirming it.
And on the iPhone? We'll see, but I'm not hopeful. Technical challenge on the G1, political challenge on the iPhone.
Fragmenting their user base (Score:2)
This article claims that the new Flash player they're working on for mobile devices will only support ActionScript 3.0, meaning the majority of flash apps which are http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/06/html5_assault_on_adobe_flash_heats_up_with_clicktoflash.html&page=3
That really sucks for anyone who trusted Adobe and stuck with their Flash Lite development guidelines, all previously made mobile apps have just been made useless.
So really if you want Flash on your mobile you're only going to get
Not a threat - still waiting on x64 Flash... (Score:3, Insightful)
People have been complaining about the lack of 64-bit Flash for four years now. If Adobe develops this plan with just as much passion as they had for x64, it'll be 10 years before we have to worry about it.
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Just to clarify, I expect Adobe to put much more into this effort than they put into x64. Whereas there's no real gain from going to x64 for the browser (and therefore not much push from consumers to have x64 Flash), Adobe has a lot to gain by pushing Flash on as many devices as possible before HTML5 and/or Silverlight take hold. Admittedly, the only reason I want x64 Flash is so that I can use a 64-bit browser, just because it's one less 32-bit app running - I don't expect any noticeable difference by sw
Photoshop for Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all I want from Adobe. Please please please please please!
Adobe is a horrible company to do business with (Score:3, Informative)
Let's say you're work for a small business or non-profit and you have, say, four licensed copies of Adobe's Creative Suite products. When you bought them, the current version was CS62. Several months later, you've decided there's value in providing these tools to another employee. That's right, you want to give Adobe another $500-2500, depending on the product(s) included. Sorry, Adobe is now at CS63, and they won't sell you CS62 anymore. What's more, the two versions are "sort of" compatible. You can import one version into the other, but all elements may not translate properly. Nope, if you want to add another user of their software, you have to purchase another full license and four upgrades in order to keep them all at the same version!
Did you get a lot of life out of your Photoshop installation but finally decide to upgrade? Great! Check online for eligible upgrade versions. Hooray, it's listed! But wait, when you attempt to install it, it won't accept the license key from your old version of Photoshop. It turns out Adobe's installation path for your version is to call customer service. [insert dead horse about how ridiculous it is to punish your paying customers vs. pirates by forcing them to activate] So you get Adobe on the phone. "We're sorry, in order to upgrade your version, you're going to have to uninstall the product, then reinstall it again with a special command line switch."
Personally, I will avoid Adobe products wherever there is a viable alternative. Adobe chooses to follow the Microsoft example of exploiting dominance in a sector by putting their customers through bullshit those with a choice would never put up with.
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Has anyone mentioned that developing Flex Sucks? (Score:2, Informative)
Has anyone else tried to use Flash/Flex to do anything more then just a game/animation? The frameworks are at best immature. While the Flex language is "ok" (basically just ECMAScript), the libraries, tools, frameworks, and most everything else that goes with it are just abysmally bad when compared to any other modern language (Java, Obj-C, Python, C#, etc).
The Flex Builder plugin for eclipse only supports Eclipse 3.3, which means modern plugins won't work. The flex compiler itself is slow and hard to setup
What about Nokia's policy? (Score:2)
Believe or not, some execs at Nokia still believe one may upgrade his hardware to have a fixed/better feature.
The entire scheme of things in Symbian is to have current software/features and even beta experiments on latest generation of hardware (devices) regardless of which capabilities the older generation may have.
Basically, it means E71, the number 1 suprise hit of Nokia won't get the attention of N97/5800 which entire Nokia seems to focus on. They actually believe they can convince a E71 owner who is pe
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I think you should perhaps go back and read the summary carefully.
You're the first one to mention open source. Unless you think the story submitter spells source in a really eccentric fashion.
Re:Who said anything about Open Source? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I'm sorry, I though this was an argument. I'm in abuse. Terribly sorry about that.
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Well, get on with it!
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They are. http://www.embeddedflash.com/?p=571
That was linked from beagleboard.org a few days ago.
Beagleboard uses the TI OMAP3530 processor using an ARM 8 core (and a bunch of other stuff).
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No, it doesn't.
There are basically 4 cores that ARM Ltd. sells - the ARM9, ARM11, Cortex A8, and Cortex A9. (I'm leaving out the various little features of each, and going with general family). It's an easy mistake to make, but an ARM9 doesn't hold a candle to the Cortex A9.
The Cortex series of cores are the latest and shiniest, being that the core difference between the A8 and A9 is that the A9 supports symmetric mu
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I think the acceleration they refer to is for a) decoding streaming video/audio data (something that's been done on PCs for a long time, to free up the cpu for other tasks, and usually uses less power than the CPU would to decode it, too), and maybe b) for accellerating vector graphics primitives (drawing lines, circles, polygons, arcs, etc), something which *also* has been done in silicon for a long time (I think back in the days of Windows 3.1 they were already starting to come out with cards which could
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There have been hardware Java machines, why not a hardware Actionscript machine? It's just bytecode.