Adobe Flash player for iPhone due 'soon' if Apple approves

[AppleInsider]

Adobe is nearly done with a version of its Flash Player for the iPhone that could be released 'in a very short time' if it passes Apple's App Store screening process, an Adobe official said this week.

Speaking at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference in Brighton, Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems Paul Betlem was asked by an audience member for an update on Flash support for iPhone users.

Betlem reportedly responded by saying his team is "working on Flash on the iPhone" but given that the iPhone is a closed and closely guarded system, Apple will have final say over whether the application makes its way onto the App Store.

Should Apple approve the software, it would be available "in a very short time," Betlem added.

In March, Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen publicly confirmed that his engineers had begun work on a version of Flash for the iPhone. Three months later he said he was pleased with the ongoing progress. Therefore, the only new information to come from Betlem's comments is word that the first version of the software is nearly ready for submission to Apple.

Betlem offered no further details, leaving several unanswered questions , such as how the player would function within websites given Apple's current iPhone developer guidelines, or how it would prove useful in accessing Flash media as a standalone application.

Earlier this year, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs panned Flash on the iPhone, arguing that its fragmented architecture offered no middle ground suitable for use on his company's mobile products.

Specifically, he said Flash Lite "is not capable of being used with the web" because it doesn't support the same types of Flash media accessible by the traditional version of Flash player on the PC. On the otherhand, the version built for PC was dubbed a resource hog that "performs too slow to be useful" on the iPhone.

"There's this missing product in the middle," he said.

It remains to be seen whether Adobe's most recent efforts are suited to fill that gap.

For more on Apple's broader resistance to embracing Adobe's Flash technology, please see AppleInsider's three-part series: Flash Wars.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[johnqh]

No!

Nothing against Flash, but Flash is a platform for bad programmers to eat up CPU usage like crazy. My CPU (C2D) goes to close to 100% when I visit some websites. Even youtube.com requires about 800mhz to 1Ghz to play.

And I have not missed Flash a bit on iPhone.

[filburt]

I would like Flash support if the contents can be played by clicking on it, much like how Safari launches YouTube app. That would probably require hacking into Safari though, or Flash app having WebKit of its own (like 1Password app).

[SpamSandwich]

As long as you can block Flash as an option, that should be OK.

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by johnqh

No!

Nothing against Flash, but Flash is a platform for bad programmers to eat up CPU usage like crazy. My CPU (C2D) goes to close to 100% when I visit some websites. Even youtube.com requires about 800mhz to 1Ghz to play.

And I have not missed Flash a bit on iPhone.

So, that doesn't mean that everbody else should not have the option to have it. Many of us want it. And there are bad progammers that don't use flash besides.

[BlackSummerNight]

Well something is wrong with your computer. BRING ON FLASH!

Originally Posted by johnqh

No!

Nothing against Flash, but Flash is a platform for bad programmers to eat up CPU usage like crazy. My CPU (C2D) goes to close to 100% when I visit some websites. Even youtube.com requires about 800mhz to 1Ghz to play.

And I have not missed Flash a bit on iPhone.

[Crtaylor]

I think that even though Flash only benefits Adobe and is not a universal, server-agnostic app like Sproutcore, the reality is that most computer users use Flash to view content. Apple really needs to consider this since Flash is pretty much everywhere on the web now, and to pan Flash on the iPhone is only going to help Apple to full behind the competition in that regard.

[dyp]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Adobe is nearly done with a version of its Flash Player for the iPhone the could be released 'in a very short time' if it passes Apple's App Store screening process, an Adobe official said this week.

Speaking at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference in Brighton, Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems Paul Betlem was asked by an audience member for an update on Flash support for iPhone users.

Betlem reportedly responded by saying his team is "working on Flash on the iPhone" but given that the iPhone is a closed and closely guarded system, Apple will have final say over whether the application makes its way onto the App Store.

Should Apple approve the software, it would be available "in a very short time," Betlem added.

In March, Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen publicly confirmed that his engineers had begun work on a version of Flash for the iPhone. Three months later he said he was pleased with the ongoing progress. Therefore, the only new information to come from Betlem's comments is word that the first version of the software is nearly ready for submission to Apple.

Betlem offered no further details, leaving several unanswered questions , such as how the player would function within websites given Apple's current iPhone developer guidelines, or how it would prove useful in accessing Flash media as a standalone application.

Earlier this year, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs panned Flash on the iPhone, arguing that its fragmented architecture offered no middle ground suitable for use on his company's mobile products.

Specifically, he said Flash Lite "is not capable of being used with the web" because it doesn't support the same types of Flash media accessible by the traditional version of Flash player on the PC. On the otherhand, the version built for PC was dubbed a resource hog that "performs too slow to be useful" on the iPhone.

"There's this missing product in the middle," he said.

It remains to be seen whether Adobe's most recent efforts are suited to fill that gap.

For more on Apple's broader resistance to embracing Adobe's Flash technology, please see AppleInsider's three-part series: Flash Wars.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

Hmmm... I think flash already runs on the iPhone.

http://www.matterofpark.com/2008/07/...ne-coming.html

Inside source from Adobe said back in July when I asked him about Flash on the iPhone "It's ready to go but it's up to Steve (Jobs) to release it"

[Ted13]

Unless Adobe first provides a high quality, excellent performance Flash client for Mac OS X, Apple should reject flash for the iPhone. Period.

[monstrosity]

screw flash, i cant believe how many people think having flashing is beneficial.

In the long term believe me, your better off without it.
The more people realize this, and start to look at alternatives, the quicker the transition will happen.

[Mr Underhill]

I was a little disapponted when I first discovered my iPhone couldn't browse flash based websites but now i'm not too bothered. Having said that I'd agree the option to have it would be a plus as long as it could be toggled on/off.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by Crtaylor

... the reality is that most computer users use Flash to view content.

the "real" reality is that most computer users need flash to watch movies on the web only. If not for that, most people could turn off flash entirely and never look back.

Since there already is a cross-platform, standards compliant way to view videos on the web, the real solution is to convince web designers to use that instead of Flash. Not having Flash on the iPhone is a part of that effort to persuade web designers to stop using Flash for movies. Ergo, if Flash *does* come to the iPhone, it will be a giant step backwards for cross-platform compatibility and web standards.

[monstrosity]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

if Flash *does* come to the iPhone, it will be a giant step backwards for cross-platform compatibility and web standards.

Absolutely

[bloggerblog]

Originally Posted by monstrosity

screw flash, i cant believe how many people think having flashing is beneficial.

In the long term believe me, your better off without it.
The more people realize this, and start to look at alternatives, the quicker the transition will happen.

Hey... I can get the real version of Frogger for free as a Flash app, in the app store it's $10 for a crappy version
Besides, if Apple puts a Flash on/off switch in the Settings then why not? just leave it off.

[jrandersoniii]

Its nice to see so many programming snobs, who know what others need.

I work in the corporate training world... Flash is our primary means of developing mobile learning content. Most of the authoring tools we use put content in Flash. Everything could be done in HTML, but thats not the right solution either for dynamic content. Neither is requiring training and development people to learn C so they can use the iPhone developers kit.

Flash SHOULD BE AVAILABLE - and i agree with the other person that said the solution would be to treat it like a "You Tube" link, requiring you to click on it.

The iPhone is a very powerful tool... having Flash available will help to expand the use of this tool in the corporate world.

Sorry if that opinion offends some of you programming prudes.

[Lictor]

Originally Posted by johnqh

Nothing against Flash, but Flash is a platform for bad programmers to eat up CPU usage like crazy.

I love when people come up with terminal opinions like that...

Any language is a platform for bad programming, whether it's Smalltalk, Java, C++, Cobol or Ruby. Bad programming is a skill that exists outside of any programming language.

My CPU (C2D) goes to close to 100% when I visit some websites. Even youtube.com requires about 800mhz to 1Ghz to play.

Yes, and most game are slow like a snail on my PIII-700, this shows how bad C++ is as a programming language...
Really, the problem is with your computer, not the platform. You have to face it, the web as evolved. Flash, properly used, allows you to create real applications on the web - "RIA". Real applications need power. Moreover, there is always a tradeof between security, programing speed and optimization. I would rather buy a faster CPU than lose on security or increase costs by slowing the development process. CPU power is dirt cheap right now. That is the current trend with all the current languages - Ruby, Java, C#... Actually, Smalltalk (and Objective-C) started that trend.
I have done enough C++ to know I'm not going back in the 20th century...

And I have not missed Flash a bit on iPhone.

I do. Flash is a fantastic platform for corporate programming. Flex is an incredibly productive tool and it lets developers work within a *real* platform, with a real architecture, unlike the struggle you have to do in Javascript to achieve anything remotely elegant.

[Galley]

Flash already bogs down my system for 10-20 seconds at a time. Now I can look forward to the same experience on my iPhone. Wheee!

[kaiser_soze]

I don't know about how Flash runs on Mac, but on the PC, it is intolerable, because it does consume every bit of available CPU. If you are running only one browser window with nothing else, you don't notice it, but if you have anything else running in the background, it runs like mud, or if you have two browser windows open and both are running Flash, neither will run correctly. The full nature of the problem is exacerbated by the fact that in Windows, any application that hogs CPU can make it difficult if not practically impossible to get control of it. The task bar at the bottom of the screen does not respond, and unless you have opened the task manager and set its priority to "real time", there is no good way to even kill the browser process.

Perhaps it runs differently on the Mac, and hopefully it will behave differently on the iPhone. But because of the other things that I have seen Adobe do with their other applications, I don't have any confidence in anything that Adobe does. Having said that, it will probably behave better on the iPhone than on the PC at least, because you are less likely, I would assume, to have background processes running on an iPhone, or to have two browser windows open at once. If it turns out that Flash does not disrupt the overall behavior of the iPhone, it will likely have more to do with how Apple has implemented the run-time environment than with anything that Adobe has managed to do correctly. In particular, if the run-time environment is such that an application that stays in a tight loop polling for input or for some notification event from the OS can disrupt the overall behavior of the platform, then you can pretty much take it for granted that it will be a disaster, because it is evident from the things that Adobe has done that their programmers do not understand or have an appreciation for the event-driven software paradigm, as opposed to applications that simply spin in tight loops while waiting for input and notification events.

[Crtaylor]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

the "real" reality is that most computer users need flash to watch movies on the web only. If not for that, most people could turn off flash entirely and never look back.

Since there already is a cross-platform, standards compliant way to view videos on the web, the real solution is to convince web designers to use that instead of Flash. Not having Flash on the iPhone is a part of that effort to persuade web designers to stop using Flash for movies. Ergo, if Flash *does* come to the iPhone, it will be a giant step backwards for cross-platform compatibility and web standards.

I could see you being somewhat correct. Being a college student majoring in Graphics Arts, I always wonder about what I will use in the future. I don't think that Flash is the right solution for every web application. It only benefits Adobe, which has been half-assed to Apple from the get-go. However, Flash does make it easier for web developers to make all kinds of interactive web sites - along with the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite. Therefore, it will be very hard to wipe clean from the face of the earth. What I really meant to say interactive content, not just content.

[Mac-sochist]

Originally Posted by kaiser_soze

....Perhaps it runs differently on the Mac, and hopefully it will behave differently on the iPhone....

It's a little better on the Mac, because you can almost always force-quit Safari alone when (not if, when) it makes it crash.

I don't understand why all the people complaining about Mobile Safari crashing all the time would want something that will make it much worse.

(On the Mac, it's customary to blame Safari for incompatibility with Flash, but Firefox screws up just as bad. However, if you have infinite patience and can wait, wait, wait for the beachball to stop spinning to view every page, it works. As long as you don't forget you're on a Flash-heavy site and do something stupid like hit the "back" button!)

Die, Flash, Die!

[Crtaylor]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Adobe should release Flash under a public license so that any Flash content does directly benefit Adobe? I think that would ultimately create better solutions for Flash and ultimately bring it to the iPhone in a CPU-friendly way.

[Lictor]

Originally Posted by monstrosity

In the long term believe me, your better off without it.
The more people realize this, and start to look at alternatives, the quicker the transition will happen.

Yes, you mean alternatives like AJAX? That's the way to go: an obsolete language on top of an obsolete architecture... Or do you mean solutions like SilverLight, which are not yet mature or cross-platform?
Flash is 10 times cleaner than AJAX. It lets you do real programming on the client side, with a real object-oriented architecture and an almost decent language.

[Lictor]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

the "real" reality is that most computer users need flash to watch movies on the web only. If not for that, most people could turn off flash entirely and never look back.

The other reality, is that with the iPhone, Apple is going against mobiles like the Blackberry. It wants to win the corporate market too.
And on the corporate market, Flash is used neither to watch silly videos or to view "content". It's used to view datas. Even basic tools like Google Analytics use Flash.
Flex and Air are the killer tool to build Intranets and Extranets that have a lot of data to present to the end user. The alternative is to build native iPhone apps, and that's not cost effective.

Since there already is a cross-platform, standards compliant way to view videos on the web, the real solution is to convince web designers to use that instead of Flash.

Which way? Does it work? Does it support streaming? Maybe we should go back to the days video on the web meant RealPlayer? Yuck...
I mean, if web designers use Flash for that purpose, it is for a reason : it saves money. You're not going to convince companies to spend money on an inferior solution just to please Apple.

[TenoBell]

I agree this benefits Adobe more than the wider web. The iPhone with no flash is a serious threat to it's current dominance. If the iPhone grows into a prominent platform without flash. Its an example to others that tou don't need flash. As HTML and javascript mature developers will create web applications without the use of flash or Adobe Air. Which is pretty much happening already.

[sflocal]

I'm not a fan of Flash either and do not miss it at all on my iPhone. Flash for the majority of users is known to be used only as a method of delivering ads and in the process, consuming bandwidth and cpu usage. I think even the Flash supporters will agree on this.

However, as much as I prefer it stay off the iPhone entirely, the opportunity to have it ported to the iPhone in a way that satisfies the corporate users and not irritate the majority-users is huge.

Perhaps Steve Jobs' distaste for Flash in its current model will get Adobe to finally address the shortcomings that Flash in general has always had. It could have been the grand scheme since the beginning for Jobs. On the other hand, Flash can deliver content and applications outside the control of the App Store which I'm sure is a major sticking-point for Jobs.

Flash should be implemented like YouTube in which the user has to click on it in order to activate the content. Even in 3G, the bandwidth just isn't there and it's a waste since most ads are flash-based.

I prefer it stay off, but implemented well and have the user in complete control of its use will get my stamp of approval.

[jcatma61]

An Adobe product that's as a big a CPU hog as it is a wallet and market hog?

Come on... You're all kidding me, right?

Adobe should just send its last 500 US-based employees to Mumbai and develop for the third world, and just get it over with. They're just another fat, lazy tech company now.

Flash is useful, yes, but not an absolute necessity for iPhone.

What's irritating is hearing Adobe people sniff that it's an APPLE issue that their system is so "closed."

I've found plenty of other (read: NOT Adobe) labels over the years that allow me to design and publish successfully... oh, yeah, and economically too.

Rarely have I had someone say, "Gee, could you author that with some Adobe product?"

[Lictor]

Originally Posted by TenoBell

Its an example to others that tou don't need flash. As HTML and javascript mature developers will create web applications without the use of flash or Adobe Air. Which is pretty much happening already.

Javascript and HTML won't mature, they're past maturation and they move onto decomposition.

Really. ActionScript 3 is what JavaScript *should* be if it was able to actually follow the ECMAScript bleeding edge evolution. Which it is not, since it is plagued with backward compatibility. Actually, the single best thing to come to JavaScript lately was JiT compilation - something that has been available for years on Java and C#. And JiT actually came to JS from Flash...
Currently, programming in JS is an utter mess. You must pile librairies unto librairies to hope for some cross-browser compatibility. And eventually, these librairies are even heavier than the Flash runtime. Not to mention the various problems when you try to use several librairies together, such as several depending on jQuery and Prototype in the same program.

As for HTML, that's not better. The language was never meant to build desktop-like applications. And it shows. Badly.

And CSS is the worst. Maintaining a site to look *exactly* the same on IE6, IE7, IE8, FF2, FF3, Chrome, Opera and Safari is a real nightmare! And some clients still ask for IE5.5 compatibility... And it's going to get worse in the future, Apple is already adding custom extensions to WebKit, we're heading back to the old browser war...

Really, JS + CSS + HTML is obsolete for anything but the good old web. It's not meant to build applications. You complain about Flash being a ressource hog? Have you tried using GMail on an old PC or on a browser without a super-optimized JS engine? And GMail is written by the unlimited ressources at Google and has a very streamlined interface. Yahoo Mail is far worse. And keeping these applications maintainable is a struggle against the platform rather than coming naturally with it.

The future lies with applications built on a markup language (enriched XML) and a modern language. I don't really care if it's Flex, Silverlight or something built on Ruby+XML/YAML. Really. But anything but the current mess.

[Lorre]

None of you guys ever visited a mainstream musician, video game or blockbuster movie site? Those are pretty much exclusively done in Flash. Sure, a lot of crap is made in Flash but that's not Adobe's fault.

Just look at this for an example:

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

Only Flash can make websites like that. Sure, it makes one of my cores go to 100% but you gotta admit that's one amazing looking webpage.

Also, Flex is pretty awesome as a development environment for RIA's.

That being said, I fully agree Adobe should do some serious work on the flash engine, considering how far along javascript engines have come.

[Cesium133x]

I hear (elswhere, not in these comments) a lot of people wanting Flash on the iPhone, mostly for "all those cool Flash-based games". I have one question for them: how will you play those games without a keyboard and a mouse? Do you expect every developer to adapt them to the iPhone?

And don't talk to me about Flash video. This one should be sealed into a high-security capsule and catapulted into the Sun. An video player that requires more CPU for the interpreter than for the video codec? That can't scrub properly? Gimme a break. Developers should allocate their time on a solution to make Windows not be the only platform unable to play (ISO standard) MPEG-4 out of the box instead.

[whatisgoingon]

Flash is:

-an excellent attack vector, with numerous security issues that have been exploited in the past
-would promote the use of a proprietary, non-standard format

I think that the people that was Flash to be added are envisioning a world where Flash content would be recreated to work properly for the completely different user-input model that the iPhone (compared with how users interact with Flash on computers). This would happen ONLY for a small fraction of the Flash content out there.

So, the vast majority of the Flash content you would get access to:
a) are ads
b) look totally crappy on the iPhone (as they are mini-applications)
c) work poorly, as most of them have tiny controls that work OK for mouse controls, but poorly for a touch UI (unless you zoom in, but then you can't see the content).

I expect Adobe to trot out a custom Flash application, and then demo a custom, iPhone-specific Flash "app" that looks and works great on the iPhone and then declare "See, Flash can work great on the iPhone". And then demo some well-known site (maybe even YouTube) that they've directly worked with to also have custom iPhone-specific Flash to do a "see, all internet Flash could/will look like this on the iPhone".

[Zendolphyn]

It seems the only place online that I really miss having a Flash plug-in on my iPhone are mainly restaurant sites that use it as their sole method of navigation when I'm out with friends and I want to look at a menu ahead of time.

[GordonComstock]

Originally Posted by Lorre

None of you guys ever visited a mainstream musician, video game or blockbuster movie site? Those are pretty much exclusively done in Flash. Sure, a lot of crap is made in Flash but that's not Adobe's fault.

Just look at this for an example:

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

And that's an example of... ???

How about this:

http://unscrewamerica.org/

Lots of fun, but totally impractical on the iPhone. Only a dedicated iPhone version would be worth the trouble of "fingering" through the easter eggs.

gc

[bloggerblog]

Originally Posted by Lorre

None of you guys ever visited a mainstream musician, video game or blockbuster movie site? Those are pretty much exclusively done in Flash. Sure, a lot of crap is made in Flash but that's not Adobe's fault.

Just look at this for an example:

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

Only Flash can make websites like that. Sure, it makes one of my cores go to 100% but you gotta admit that's one amazing looking webpage.

Also, Flex is pretty awesome as a development environment for RIA's.

That being said, I fully agree Adobe should do some serious work on the flash engine, considering how far along javascript engines have come.

Good point. These sites are uber awesome, but require some serious talent at all levels.

[bobmarleypeople]

I think there's gonna be a fair few angry people out there if what I think's gonna happen...happens.

Flash would be difficult to add to iphone because it specifically adds onto the safari application. Apple fire their laser at anyone trying to do such a thing through the app store. Therefore, there's a high possibility of flash being released in the next iphone/ipod touch update (i.e. pre-installed with on/off option in safari options).

The only other way I can see this working is if adobe created their own mini browser that uses safari to connect to net, but has flash (thus not connecting to the safari app itself, but apple will want people using plain old safari, so no dice).

Who know's how it's gonna end. All I know is: I don't care.

[jowie74]

All I can say is, bring it on.

If you don't like it, turn it off! Honestly, what's the issue.

I lead a team of Flash programmers and we all use AS3 and PureMVC as a framework. I'm not going to be modest, we're damn good programmers. The idea that Flash is just for "bad programmers" is a terribly short-sighted opinion.

[Adjei]

How many other touchscreen phones have flash in them, it's not as easy as it looks, Apple will incorporate it when they can finally get it right and it suits, they shouldn't be moved by pressure, lately by doing this, some of their products haven't been working as well as they should. Even the new Blackberry Storm coming out doesn't have flash and it's a touchscreen device.

[timgriff84]

Originally Posted by Lictor

Yes, you mean alternatives like AJAX? That's the way to go: an obsolete language on top of an obsolete architecture... Or do you mean solutions like SilverLight, which are not yet mature or cross-platform?
Flash is 10 times cleaner than AJAX. It lets you do real programming on the client side, with a real object-oriented architecture and an almost decent language.

Im on the side of having flash but can't really agree about it being 10 times cleaner and that it lets you do real programming. As a developer I hate using flash to do any real programming, the tools to build in it are just awful as their so geared towards designers rather than developers. Compare that to doing AJAX in .NET I always go with AJAX. The .NET framework makes it so easy to implement you can do so much in a very short space of time. The real future though I would have to say will come when SilverLight matures, so far it looks like all the good bits of Flash mixed with .NET to make a developers dream environment. Microsoft may not be doing so well with Windows at the moment but their tools for developers are the best by far.

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

Since there already is a cross-platform, standards compliant way to view videos on the web, the real solution is to convince web designers to use that instead of Flash. Not having Flash on the iPhone is a part of that effort to persuade web designers to stop using Flash for movies. Ergo, if Flash *does* come to the iPhone, it will be a giant step backwards for cross-platform compatibility and web standards.

So what isn't cross-platform about Flash? Not to mention over 90% of the computers accessing the web have Flash, thats more than any browser! Having flash also doesn't just mean more money for Adobe. People don't pay for the flash player and you don't have to buy Adobes development tools to build a Flash movie, their are other tools around, some of which are free.

[Blah64]

Originally Posted by jowie74

If you don't like it, turn it off! Honestly, what's the issue.

Some of you just aren't thinking it through (or perhaps have your own personal agenda for wanting Flash, i.e. Flash devs)

EVERYONE JUST READ THIS: The more broadly available Flash is, the more broadly it will be used (and abused, as is often the case now). That means more and more sites that I can't/won't be able to use. So yes, it *does* affect others.

If a new, popular platform exists that does not and will not run Flash, then more sites will be forced to consider using standards-based, non-proprietary, non-sandbox-bypassing, non-CPU-gorging technology.

I guess you might as well say: If you don't like heroin, just don't use it. The problem is there are a lot of ramifications that may affect others.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by BlackSummerNight

Well something is wrong with your computer. BRING ON FLASH!

Nothing is wrong with his computer. My Multicore CPU with 4GB Ram pegs at 99% for the main core since Flash isn't Multicore aware and furthermore even with the 32bit shared libs for 64bit Linux it's butt ass slow.

Flash routinely locks up Opera 9.52 and 9.60 beta.

When pressed for the 64 bit clean Flash on Linux we get a retort about the 32 libs are just fine.

Well guess what: The same bull will happen with OS X 10.6.

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2....html#comments

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by jowie74

All I can say is, bring it on.

If you don't like it, turn it off! Honestly, what's the issue.

I lead a team of Flash programmers and we all use AS3 and PureMVC as a framework. I'm not going to be modest, we're damn good programmers. The idea that Flash is just for "bad programmers" is a terribly short-sighted opinion.

Show me your usage of MVC with Cocoa/Core Data/KVC and CoreGraphics and I'll judge whether or not you're a "damn good programmers."