Archive for: flash
- 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?
BlackBerry hopefuls praying that RIM would bring certain PlayBook features such as Flash support and Android app capabilities to their smartphone line with BlackBerry OS 7 will be disappointed to know that it simply won’t happen. RIM is reportedly focused on keeping said features on the QNX platform despite the fact that the new 1.2GHz processors in the BB 9900/9930 meet Adobe’s minimum requirements for Flash.
As it stands now, RIM is in a precarious position. It’s a known fact that QNX has plenty of potential. It’s just that potential hasn’t been fully utilized by RIM quite yetl. At the same time, locking out OS 7 (and any other pre-QNX smartphone OS versions) from QNX features effectively kills the smartphone platform from any new developer adoption. Why develop for a platform that is a known dead end?
We remain optimistic that RIM can deliver some truly unique hardware and software in the coming months. For now, we’ll have to cling to the “early next year” comment made by RIM’s own Jim Balsillie in regards to a new QNX-based OS for BlackBerry smartphones. That is where the tide could really begin to turn in RIM’s favor.
The aging SD-card spec gets pushed higher and higher with each passing year. A couple of years ago, the big thing was SDXC and it’s promised 2TB capacities. But in 2011, we’re on to bigger and better things. Built on top of current SDHC and SDXC hardware, the new UHS-II spec aims to push transfer rates higher with additional rows of pins on the cards themselves. Speaking of transfer rates, we’re hearing a stout 312MB/s is the goal. Even if we see half of that, it’s still a lot faster than what’s currently possible.
In other flash memory news, SanDisk has started offering a 128GB Compact Flash memory card. This power Core controller and a UDMA-7-equipped slab of plastic features 100MB/s transfer rates as well as a heart-stopping $1,499 price tag. Then again, the type of crowd who needs such luxuries shouldn’t have too hard of a time finding the spare change required.
- December 4, 2010 12:02 pm
Solid state drives are getting faster, more capacious, and falling in price with each passing week. Within the next 1-3 years, SSD’s will be big enough and cheap enough to finally move over to the masses instead of being an enthusiast-only product. WIth that said, I am a bit late to the SSD arena, for this Samsung SSD pictured above is my first such drive. But I can now finally say “I get it”. As the saying goes “You can’t miss what you’ve never had” rings true. Before purchasing this SSD, I knew they were fast and I had seen that they were fast. However, I hadn’t experienced just how fast they really were. And now that I have, I’m never going back.
With that said, the SSD market is quickly filling up with plenty of options from various hardware manufacturers including but not limited to Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Intel, and Samsung to name a few. In light of that, how does Samsung’s new second-gen SSD’s fair? The results are after the jump…
- November 30, 2010 6:18 am
You may recall a handy little upgrade provided by Photo Fast that brought a faster, and much larger 256GB SSD of sorts to Apple’s 11″ Macbook Air. Currently, Apple doesn’t allow 11″ Macbook Air owners to partake of anything more than 128GB of non-moving storage. And apparently, Apple wants it to stay that way.
The after market upgrade you see above has had sales suspended following conversation between Photo Fast and Apple. The latter of whom has requested an immediate freeze on sales — before the devices were even available for sale. The reason Photo Fast is giving in so willingly is simply because they don’t what to lose their licensing agreement with Apple to build “certified” Apple accessories (certainly understandable). Though Photo Fast has stated sales for the 256GB 11″ Macbook Air upgrade kit are again, “frozen”, and not canceled. Our guess is that they’re hoping some sort of deal can be worked out with Apple. I’m sure plenty of potential 11″ Macbook Air users hope the same too.
Any Macbook Air users peeved?
- November 30, 2010 6:10 am
As cameras grow in megapixel count, gain video recording capabilities, and life’s demands request more and more pictures, the memory cards that store said memories are pushed to their limits. Though, storage space isn’t really a concern. Numbers for such things have exploded over the last few years to the point that anyone can pick up more memory or storage than they’ll probably ever use for photos. But what good is a 2TB memory card if it transfers at a pokey 10-100MB/s?
Nikon, Sandisk, and Sony are coming to our aide, as they have started work on a next-gen Compact Flash standard that would see speeds raised from 100MB/s to nearly 600MB/s. A 6x increasing in transfer speeds could certainly give hardcore photographers a nice chunk of their day back that is currently wasted on waiting for images to transfer. The only downside of course, is that the new standard won’t be backwards compatible with existing Compact Flash technology.
For now, the wait looks pretty long. The Compact Flash Association is just beginning to receive the trio’s ideas and plans. From there begins many, many months of testing and planning. But if it brings about dramatically improved Compact Flash transfer speeds, I personally don’t mind the wait.
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…
