Mike Chambers, in a more rational posting than the usual from Adobe employees. But I have a comments on it anyway:
They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms.
(Emphasis added.)
I disagree strongly here. In fact, it is every bit as easy for a developer to target platforms other than iPhone as it was before. Either way, the developer has to rewrite their Objective-C application in Flash. The difference is that with Flash being able to target iPhone, previously the developer with an iPhone application could throw away their Objective-C source code.
But do you think any developers did? Do you think any of us examined our application, tilted our heads to one side, and declared “This is just too efficient and fast. I think I’ll throw it away and use the Flash version.”
Let’s be clear here: iPhone is the platform that matters to me. I have an iPhone application already. Apple is not trying to restrict what developers do on other platforms. They are incapable of making development on another platform harder than it is now. The very idea is laughable. What they can do, however, is prevent developers from cross-compiling to their platform.
So, was all of the work on the iPhone packager a waste of time and resources? No, I don’t believe so. We proved that:
- There is no technical reason that Flash can’t run on the iPhone
- Developers can create well performing and compelling content for the device with Flash
Here again I disagree with Mike. The Flash applications that Adobe posted to the store were universally reviled for their huge flash and memory footprint and poor performance. While Adobe proved that Flash can run on the iPhone, it also proved that it can’t run well.
The second point has still not been proven. What has been proven instead is that developers can create well performing and compelling content for other devices in Flash.
However, more importantly, the teams implemented features (such as hardware acceleration and Ahead of Time compilation) that we will now be able to leverage for other devices and platforms. We have gained knowledge and experience that are being directly applied to Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for other mobile operating systems.
These features will help. That is true. However, these features could and should have come as a result of Flash on other mobile devices. Although these improvements will also help Flash on Mac OS X, Flash on Mac OS X has performed poorly for years. Introducing the iPhone into this thought is as good a fit as blending a steak into a strawberry milk shake.
If Adobe is serious about creating cross-platform applications, they took the wrong approach from the start: An Objective-C compiler that compiles to Flash would have been much more useful. But this would accomplish the opposite of what Adobe wants to do: locking developers into using Adobe’s tools. This has never been about picking open over closed, just picking Adobe’s closed over Apple’s closed.
(Thanks to Daring Fireball.)
Update: The first paragraph of this started out as a comment to Mike’s blog. That comment was rejected. That is the degree to which Mike believes in openness.
Well, Adobe has created a C++ to SWF tool, called Alchemy. Perhaps they could modify it to work with Objective-C. However, the issue that many content owners and Flash developers are asking for is a way to get existing Flash content, which there is a lot of it out there, onto mobile devices.
That said since 3rd party tools are now banned for iPhone development, I imagine other companies will look at converting Objective-C to say Java to create an Android app.
Also note that unlike Apple, Adobe does allow 3rd party tools to create Flash content. The Flex SDK can compile any ActionScript code down to SWF and other companies have used it to build their own Flash tools. Adobe employees have even sometimes commented quite positively on the FDT ActionScript editor that competes directly with their Flash Builder 4.
I have debated turning off comments here a few times. Thank you four yours, Matthew. It was a good reminder that insightful comments are out there.
Please pardon the mess if your comment doesn’t render well, I’ll fix that tonight.
Adobe’s profit center is on the tools. Apple’s is on the platform. So the equivalent of swapping the tools is simply buying a different phone.
I keep coming back to the idea that someone at Adobe thought that 10+MB sample applications were acceptable. One of them was a stopwatch, right? So they posted a stopwatch that weighs in at 13MB. So far from arguing with Apple, I’d like to thank them for keeping shovelware like that out of the store.
I have no problems with Apple blocking Flash-built apps from iTunes but I do have a problem with Apple saying I can’t install Flash-based or any other app on MY phone.
No problem, Don. Pay $99 for a developer license, and you can install whatever you like. Or unlock and install the special version of Flash that Adobe makes available for unlocked phones.
They do have a version of Flash for unlocked phones, don’t they? Wait, they don’t? So how is anyone saying Flash works?
The first iPhone apps from the alpha of Flash CS5, were big and slow because Adobe was including all the libraries they had created whether or not the app needed it or not and they didn’t use hardware acceleration, they were all CPU based. At this point it was more of a proof of concept and file size dropped while speed increased in the beta. I imagine apps made with the final release will be even faster and smaller.
Here’s an app made with Flash CS5 and it’s only 7.7 megs: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chroma-circuit/id331078068?mt=8 It’s gone through 2 updates and improvements were basically speed. Also I linked to this game as Apple included in as one of their featured apps in the iTunes store, likely not realizing it was made with Flash CS5.
There’s a number of other iPhone apps that got good reviews and sold quite well.
So it doesn’t seem to be technical reasons that Flash based apps are going to be rejected, instead it seems to be purely business reasons.
Really? I’ll admit I haven’t tried it, but it’s rated 2.5 stars based on poor performance.