Adobe 'pleased' with ongoing Flash for iPhone development
Adobe said Monday that it's happy with the efforts of its engineers thus far to get a version of the company's Flash multimedia technology up and running on Apple's iPhone, but admitted there's much work left to be done.
"With respect to the iPhone, we are working on it," said Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen, responding to a question on the matter from a Jeffries & Co analyst during a quarterly conference call. "We have a version that?s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work."
Narayen added that he's nevertheless "pleased with the internal progress" that's been made to date.
The Adobe chief's comments come one day after AppleInsider revealed that Apple at its developers conference last week was encouraging community members to adopt open source technologies like SproutCore -- from which it built portions of its new MobileMe service -- as a means of developing rich internet applications, rather than get hung up on proprietary browser plug-ins like Flash.
This isn't necessarily a new message on Apple's part. The Cupertino-based electronics maker has been advocating for the past year that iPhone developers make use of modern open standards as a means of promoting true interoperability and cross platform independence for next-generation internet applications.
This stance was partially driven by the company's determination to prevent the shabby Flash experience on its Mac platform from spilling over to the iPhone. Since Flash code is interpreted not by the Web browser but rather a plug-in, that's left Apple and other platform vendors reliant on Adobe to provide a suitable and stable runtime environment. That didn't happen with the Mac, as Adobe focused the majority of its efforts on polishing the Windows plug-in while the Mac version fell behind in both features and performance.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has also been openly critical of Adobe's fragmentation of Flash into desktop and "Lite" versions, stating that neither are suitable for use on his company's handheld products. Specifically, he said the desktop version "performs too slow to be useful" on the iPhone while Flash Lite is similarly useless in that it's not fully capable of running the plethora of content written for the desktop version.
Adobe, however, remains determined to deliver a version of Flash for the iPhone that would be distributed for free as a standalone application. That's assuming Apple, which has refused to aid the company in its mission outside of handing over its standard iPhone developer tools, accepts the finalized software into its upcoming App Store.
In the meantime, Adobe is also touting its Open Screen Project, which aspires to open portions of the Flash specification and partner with a consortium of companies to push the technology as a viable platform for rich internet apps. But as was noted in AppleInsider's three-part Flash Wars series, it won't matter much given that today's internet is dominated by Microsoft, Google, and Apple, none of which have Flash up on a pedestal.
"With respect to the iPhone, we are working on it," said Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen, responding to a question on the matter from a Jeffries & Co analyst during a quarterly conference call. "We have a version that?s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work."
Narayen added that he's nevertheless "pleased with the internal progress" that's been made to date.
The Adobe chief's comments come one day after AppleInsider revealed that Apple at its developers conference last week was encouraging community members to adopt open source technologies like SproutCore -- from which it built portions of its new MobileMe service -- as a means of developing rich internet applications, rather than get hung up on proprietary browser plug-ins like Flash.
This isn't necessarily a new message on Apple's part. The Cupertino-based electronics maker has been advocating for the past year that iPhone developers make use of modern open standards as a means of promoting true interoperability and cross platform independence for next-generation internet applications.
This stance was partially driven by the company's determination to prevent the shabby Flash experience on its Mac platform from spilling over to the iPhone. Since Flash code is interpreted not by the Web browser but rather a plug-in, that's left Apple and other platform vendors reliant on Adobe to provide a suitable and stable runtime environment. That didn't happen with the Mac, as Adobe focused the majority of its efforts on polishing the Windows plug-in while the Mac version fell behind in both features and performance.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has also been openly critical of Adobe's fragmentation of Flash into desktop and "Lite" versions, stating that neither are suitable for use on his company's handheld products. Specifically, he said the desktop version "performs too slow to be useful" on the iPhone while Flash Lite is similarly useless in that it's not fully capable of running the plethora of content written for the desktop version.
Adobe, however, remains determined to deliver a version of Flash for the iPhone that would be distributed for free as a standalone application. That's assuming Apple, which has refused to aid the company in its mission outside of handing over its standard iPhone developer tools, accepts the finalized software into its upcoming App Store.
In the meantime, Adobe is also touting its Open Screen Project, which aspires to open portions of the Flash specification and partner with a consortium of companies to push the technology as a viable platform for rich internet apps. But as was noted in AppleInsider's three-part Flash Wars series, it won't matter much given that today's internet is dominated by Microsoft, Google, and Apple, none of which have Flash up on a pedestal.
Comments
Apple has a great deal of influence over OS and hardware design, but almost none over web design. They will not sway a significant number of people writing for Flash over to other technologies... the iPhone really needs Flash for the segment of people who use it regularly.
I think the point is that other more open technologies are quickly replacing the need for Flash. Also, it's *because* Apple has such a great influence over hardware and now OS design, that their decision to push other technologies in place of Flash is gaining the traction it is.
Curious how the current Apple adds on Engadget are in Flash... Apple can't singlehandedly ban Flash of the internet. .
I don't think Apple is trying to get Flash off the internet. I think it's pretty clear though, it is far from ideal for mobile devices with limited screen sizes and resources.
Apple is not gonna take it!
Good riddins Adobe. I think all mac users are fed up with Adobe's lousy product support and flash implementation for the mac.
Adobe used to have class in product, support and used to be a class company. They whored themselves to windows and put the mac at the bottom of their priority list. Their mac product specialists are arrogant and ignorant - they don't have a clue about macs.
That and the foot dragging to get Mac users current versions of their software, despite the fact that it was the Mac that put Adobe on the map in the first place, is why Apple will take their market share and make better products that aren't dependent on Adobe and their nasty attitude.
Skip
I don't think Apple is trying to get Flash off the internet. I think it's pretty clear though, it is far from ideal for mobile devices with limited screen sizes and resources.
The web must be open and therefore we need to get rid of Flash. If you think their implementation on the Mac is lousy you haven't seen their implementation on Linux. On other platforms it just doesn't even exist! Windows will go one day and it's important that those alt. oses don't continue the old trend of supporting some closed technology.
The web must be open and therefore we need to get rid of Flash. If you think their implementation on the Mac is lousy you haven't seen their implementation on Linux. On other platforms it just doesn't even exist! Windows will go one day and it's important that those alt. oses don't continue the old trend of supporting some closed technology.
As of May 1, 2008, with the introduction of the Open Screen project, the Flash specification is starting to open up.
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/
Adobe had previously released a rather extensive collection of Flash-reated specificaitons intended for use royalty-free by content creators, but the license agreement accompanying the documentation had prohibited it from being used by people intent on building an alternative player. Those restrictions have been lifted.
The intention, apparently, is to make it easier for any developer to make their own 3rd-party Flash player (particularly for mobile devices and less popular OSes, for which Adobe is not interested in spending its own development resources), using published specifications and reference designs from Adobe as a central source to help keep all the different implementations interoperable.
I thought flash was dead....lol.
almost
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/0...er-sproutcore/
Sheldon
Why must the web be open? You have a problem with Flash being closed but OSX is closed? Strange...just strange.
There you go - open source.
http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/distro/gnu-darwin/
There you go - open source.
http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/distro/gnu-darwin/
Adobe said Monday that it's happy with the efforts of its engineers thus far to get a version of the company's Flash multimedia technology up and running on Apple's iPhone, but admitted there's much work left to be done.
Considering Adobe doesn't even have Flash running well on the "full" version of OS X on current consumer-level hardware (regardless of whose "fault" that may be), I'm sure there's an incredible amount of work to be done to get it to run on the iPhone.
But for all we know Apple isn't opposed to Flash so much as it's opposed to a crappy version of Flash. The fact that Adobe has had months to port it and still have work to does, at least in part, validate Jobs' statements as to why it wasn't included from the start.