Adobe's Flash to iPhone app converter to be shut down
Ivan | Wed, 2010-04-21 13:36
Apple a little over a week ago Apple essentially banned iPhone apps from the app store that were created with the upcoming Adobe CS Flash to iPhone app converter. Details here.
Amidst a huge uproar in the development community and Adobe's public complaints Apple took stand and didn't change it's policy claiming such applications may not be as fast and stable as native applications written in Apple's development environment.
I guess the CS5 Flash to iPhone converter is still useful if somebody wants to release an app for jailbroken iPhones, but clearly the exclusion from the app store is a huge blow for Adobe.
Flash always performed poorly on OS X and was never supported on the iPhone platform. It was kind of expected that Apple will not allow the converted apps into their stores. I think Adobe took a huge risk putting effort and resources into the development of this converter without any prior assurance from Apple.
Now Adobe's Principal Product Manager for developer relations put an end to the story saying they will still release the feature for CS5 even if the apps created with it will not be allowed into the iTunes Store. However, they will not develop the feature in the future and will focus on Android instead. This was a good move.
If I had a say in Adobe's direction, before anything else I would concentrate on making sure Flash on OS X is fast and stable. Then, implement Flash to run on iPhone within a custom browser and release it for jailbroken iPhones to demonstrate how well it can perform. This would prove without doubt that Flash has a future on the iPhone platform.
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I think this is a great move on Apple's part. Adobe has had long time to make Flash work well across browsers, and now it's too late. Bring on html5.
I know Apple doesn't truly owe Adobe anything, but when I think back to one of the reasons Apple managed to hang on by the skin of their teeth back in the 90's, it was mostly due to the fact that you could run the Adobe suite of programs on it while PCs weren't fully supporting it yet. Graphic artists and schools really kept Apple going in the early years, and Adobe was one of those programs that helped it along.
It's a shame they can't try to be more supportive, however, I agree with Apple having to draw the line if Flash is too buggy and leaves their devices open to malicious attacks.
Good move Steve Jobs! You are benining to remind me of .... me!
http://stevefakeballmer.wordpress.com
I am not Steve Ballmer pretending not to be me!
agree with spigot, HTML5 is the best way for all.
Flash is ancient as Microsoft, heavy to play as Mr. Ballmer's Internet Explorer.
yes I'm brazilian xD
+1 on qwerty - bring on html 5. Apple and Adobe have been going at it for quite awhile now and as always - Adobe will lose. Which is a good thing, folks. ;-)
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Just a side note - it's a myth that Apple came anywhere near to going under (a myth kept alive mostly by PC users). Apple always had huge cash reserves - even in the dog days of the sugar salesman. And while Apple and Adobe certainly have a symbiotic relationship - they were hardly the reason Apple stuck around. Page layout programs were the big sellers in the 90s - Quark was #1. To give you an idea of Quark's size - the sales of that program alone amounted to about half of ALL of Adobe's sales at one time - every program on all platforms (Quark was actually talking about BUYING Adobe at one time). Quark didn't even appear on PCs until '92 and wasn't truly viable until Q4 which came out in '97 - so MOST of their sales were Mac (Pagemaker owned the PC market up until then). And then there is the other side of the coin - the education and graphics markets in general... It wasn't until Apple started flailing around with the clones and the other really bad ideas that PC's gained any share of the graphics market AT ALL (they had about 5% up until then). Jobs returned to Apple in '96 - that's when the turnaround began. By '98 the iMac was out and the PC weenies dream of Apple going the way of the dinosaur had turned into a nightmare that never ends (just ask WIRED magazine about their embarassing "Apple is Dead" cover). So did Adobe help Apple? Sure (and vice versa). We're they somehow Apple's savior? Not so much.
This may not be a stupid move on Apple's part, as it means more money in Apple's pockets, but exclusion of Flash in the first place was a stupid move. The people at Apple don't seem to understand that Flash is the standard for internet multimedia.
Apparently Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that either or they wouldn't be pushing their Silverchair thing (or whatever it's called - I'm not a PC guy). So you have the two top OS companies telling Adobe to take Flash and... Well you get the idea.
The best part of this whole thing is you KNOW Adobe is there in the home offices trying to figure out a way they can force everyone to buy some inferior OS they're cooking up in their basement.
thanks for suggestion, as for me I prefer to use Macvide FlashVideo Converter ...