April has been an interesting month in the development world. Just days before Adobe Launched the CS5 suite with the ability to create iPhone/Pad apps directly out of Flash CS5, Apple announced that only certain programming languages could be used to create apps for their mobile products. This doesn’t include Adobe’s CS5 suite. Now Steve Job’s has posted ‘Thoughts on Flash’ here: www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ to explain the move.
Is the crack in the relationship between Adobe and Apple turning into a separation and divorce?
I have decided to step back and try and see the big picture here. Is Apple trying to push us forward to let go of 3rd party plugin to view rich media? Do they want to keep a high standard by limiting the languages to develop in? Or is Apple feeling that their mobile app market is being threatened by cross platform development, so are proactively limiting now? Let’s have a look at some of the quotes from Steve Jobs himself:
Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards…. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?
To conserve power and keep performance Apple has gone for HTML5, CSS and Javascript. If you have already created an app in Flash which will need to be ‘rewritten’ to support touch. Is this true? I agree HTML based apps would probably conserve battery power and could be comparable to a Flash App. Now if you are smart and stick to the programming life cycle surely you can adapt your Flash app to support touch with a class or two. You can reduce cpu usage in Flash by optimising your framerate. Wouldn’t that conserve battery as well?
To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.
Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.
This quote does have logic. Using old decoders will drain the battery. So hardware decoding wins here. The only point I would like to make is that Software can be updated and improved. Hardware will need replacing to be updated.
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
Is this true? Has Flash had its day in the ‘PC era’?
To sum up Apple says Flash consumes battery, has security issues, old video decoders and is a closed system. Flash is not the way forward and therefore it’s not in Apple’s Future.
As you should be aware by now, this has sparked quite a debate. The Adobe CEO has responded in an interview (can be found here: blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/29/live-blogging-the-journals-interview-with-adobe-ceo/) and Lee Brimlow, platform evangelist has produced a scathing blog on his site: theflashblog.com/?p=1888. I have seen some twitter comments to the sound of ‘I’m moving off Iphone development’ and ‘Moving to Android’. Could this move from Apple to put a walled-garden around their developing environment have backfired? What are your views and comments?
Just to start the ball rolling, I will give you my view:
I think Apple has effectively created a double workflow for mobile app developers. Instead of using the middleware to quickly create apps for multiple platforms, you now need to use C/C++/Objective C as well to develop your apps. Doubling your workload. Apple wants you to limit your development to just Apple. It’s just not in their interest to help you create your apps on multiple platforms. Flash is a platform that is always being updated. If Apple doesn’t want it for creating apps, I’m sure Android won’t mind.
