Archive for: Adobe
- November 9, 2011 10:29 pm
Adobe may be throwing in the towel on mobile Flash but that doesn’t mean 3rd party manufacturers have to. And while we thought it would be at least a few days before we saw any “save Flash” proponents come out of hiding, RIM has gone and proven us wrong.
In a statement to AllThingsD after Adobe’s official announcement earlier today, RIM re-iterated their commitment to Flash (and HTML5) moving forward:
“As an Adobe source code licensee, we will continue to work on and release our own implementations. RIM remains committed to delivering an uncompromised Web browsing experience to our customers, including native support for Adobe Flash Player on our BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (similar to a desktop PC browser), as well as HTML5 support on both our BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook browsers.”
Yes, we know. Flash has some advantages in certain areas that web based technologies still can’t match. But honestly, those scenarios are few and far between and shrinking with each passing month. Clinging to Flash as a selling point won’t help RIM sell any more hardware. In fact, the importance of Flash as dictated by many an Android manufacturer has fallen on deaf ears. The mainstream market doesn’t see Flash as a major selling point. If it did, the iPad wouldn’t be the tablet market as we speak. Though in all fairness, RIM can’t simply cut and run. Doing so would leave an already fragile developer/consumer market looking for the exit — something RIM really doesn’t need.
RIM’s decision to keep Flash along for the ride for now is most likely the best. But if they get too comfortable (as they have over the last couple of years) with Flash riding shotgun, it’s going to result in more disappointment for everyone.
- November 9, 2011 10:59 am
Early this morning (for humans in the Eastern time zone at least) it was revealed that Adobe was to soon announce the death of Flash for mobile devices, with the company move to fully support HTML5 moving forward. As mentioned before, Adobe is shifting Flash for mobile browsers to HTML5, though has stated that they will still help developers package Flash apps for Adobe AIR for distribution in multiple app stores. 3rd party companies may continue to further develop Adobe Flash for mobile if they want to, and Flash for the desktop is unaffected.
Today was a big day for web technologies as not only did Adobe publicly acknowledge the beginning of the end for Flash, Microsoft too revealed that their Adobe Flash counterpart, Silverlight, will be more or less abandoned after the public release of Silverlight 5 slated for release later this month. The open web wins it seems.
Full statement by Adobe after the break.
Mobile Flash has long been herald as the software Jesus of the modern smartphone era. For if our phones can display the “real” web just as our desktop machines do, we have won. What exactly have we won? Atrocious battery life, stuttery scrolling, and an all-around terrible experience. Ok. We’ll be honest and admit we’ve had one or two decent mobile Flash encounters over the last year. Keyword: “decent”.
But none of that really matters now because Adobe will be publicly announcing within the next 24 hours their plans to totally abandon mobile browser flash — you know, the stuff that every anti-iPhone critic has bragged about since 2007. Apparently it wasn’t all that great. Shocker.
While Adobe is abandoning work on mobile browser Flash, they will continue to provide critical bug and security updates to PlayBook and Android platforms. At the same time Adobe will give 3rd party companies the option to continue work on Flash, so it’s likely not completely dead quite yet. According to Zdnet’s source “briefed on the matter”, Adobe will make the full details and scope of the announcement available on their website over the course of the next day.
So what’s Adobe going to do with all of this newly acquired spare time? “Applications for mobile, HTML5, “Expressive content on the desktop (in and out of the browser), and Adobe AIR apps.
Funny how things evolve, isn’t it?
The four of you out there working hard at making Adobe’s own AIR app stores the best they can be might want to re-think your future goals and ambitions. Adobe has announced today that both the consumer focused Adobe AIR Marketplace and developer focused Adobe InMarket app portals are being closed down — for good. The company cites “developer feedback” as the main reason, and instructs developers of both platforms to instead re-focus their efforts on the “more popular” platforms such as the Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World,Intel AppUp center, Samsung Apps, and Toshiba App Place (among others).
Official Adobe statement after the break…
- November 9, 2010 11:21 pm
Android users, specifically non-skinned users will want to head on over to the Android Market tonight and update to the latest Adobe Air version 2.5.1. I single out non-skinned users because they are the ones who tend to get Android updates first.
Moving on, Adobe has suggested upgrading to the latest version of AIR before Gingerbread is pushed out as to avoid any app incompatibilities and FC problems.
You know how it is folks, housekeeping.
Fans of the popular Flash-to-HTML crunching Skyfire browser on the iPhone (and many other platforms) will be happy to know that the Skyfire team is working on an iPad-specific version. At the time of writing, there aren’t many details to share. Ok, there aren’t any details to share. For a possible release date keep checking back.
So far, my personal experience with Skyfire has been pretty good. The only hiccups were around launch day when the servers imploded under the insane stress placed upon them by countless hundreds of thousands if not millions of users. So stay tuned iPad users, your day is soon coming…
- September 6, 2010 3:53 pm
Bad news bears for Droid 1 owners this afternoon: According to Adobe, the Droid 1 may not be so “Flash-ready” after all. According to the software developer, mobile Flash works on VGA devices with 550MHz processors. Push the resolution up to WVGA (read: 800 x 400-ish — Droid/Droid 2/Droid X/etc.) and the processor requirement jumps to 800MHz. Now, pushing more pixels obviously takes more power. I’ve got no problem with that. But I run my Droid 1 overclocked at 1GHz. But even then, the Flash.apk I downloaded and installed still ran like hell. It was stuttery, slow, and generally inconsistant. For the record, my Droid 1 has Froyo installed.
But even taking more “legitimate” options such as the Nexus One which runs natively at 1GHz, Flash performance is still god awful. It’s honestly one of the few times I’d agree with Steve Jobs — Flash on mobiles sucks. ‘Nough said.
Either phones will have to push past 1GHz as standard or Adobe will have to further optimize Flash for mobile devices. Regarding the former, smartphones are getting faster with each passing month. Pushing past 1GHz as standard won’t be too much of a problem. However, Adobe has been working on bringing Flash to mobile for years and it’s still horrendous. Improvements on Adobe’s front aren’t looking too hot.
So I guess the moral of the story is this: Don’t install Flash on your Android device. It’s really not that great.
Oh to be a Mac user (I actually am)… Seems we used to get the short end of the stick all too often. But now, mass defections of Windows users over the last couple of years have given Macs quite a spot in the limelight. A fair chunk of this new found popularity is also aided by the smashing successes of the iPhone and iPad. But that’s neither here nor there.
One thing that still pisses off plenty of Mac users is poor Flash performance. I know you’ve all witnessed your processor spike and/or fans spin up to deafening levels as your poor CPU deals with Flash all by its lonesome, putting off pretty alarming amounts of heat for such trivial tasks as watching a movie online.
Nevermore — Adobe has tossed in hardware-acceleration as a bullet point in the latest Flash 10.1 security update. The only bad thing I gather is my by-the-numbers-game-but-still-perfectly-capable-early 2008 Macbook Pro is not on the list of supported hardware to make use of hardware acceleration. Speaking of which:
- MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009
- Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009
- MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008
- iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009
So I’m out. Looks like it’s still hot skin and lousy Flash performance for me. Did you make out any better? Hopefully more hardware gets added to the list.
Site owners and social bugs: how would you like it if YouTube spit out some embed code that automatically served up HTML5 or Flash versions on the fly depending on the end users’ system? New tests being conducted by the online video giant are doing just that. What it means for those who spend a lot of time copying & pasting embed code is that those who want to test out the latest in HTML5 video don’t have to choose between the two technologies. Now the code does it all on its own!
The only real big caveat to HTML 5 video still holding off mass adoption by some companies is the lack of advertising potential. HTML 5 doesn’t have a cut and dry method for easily delivering ads. In these circumstances, the hybrid HTML 5/Flash embed code defaults to Flash. Conversely , if an end user is on a system that doesn’t have Flash installed, the HTML 5 video will automatically start playing.
Have a look for yourself after the jump…
