Adobe stops advancing Flash-to-iPhone, focuses on Android
updated 07:50 am EDT, Wed April 21, 2010
Adobe exec says Apple being anti-competitive
Adobe Product Manager Mike Chambers late yesterday said his company will no longer put development time into the Flash-to-iPhone conversion tool in Flash CS5. While it will still ship with the CS5 suite, the component won't get significant updates in the foreseeable future. Chambers stressed that Apple's ban on cross-compiling in the iPhone 4.0 SDK made it untenable to continue, and he accused Apple of being anti-competitive.
"The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development," Chambers said. "The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms."
Apple CEO Steve Jobs hasn't denied this but has characterized it as preserving app quality by keeping all developers on the latest code base and making sure they can use the newest features as soon as they're available. Cross-platform development apps were significant problems for the Mac in the past and kept many apps, including Adobe's Creative Suite, significantly delayed without quick updates from the creators of the intermediary tools.
Chambers noted that Flash 10.1 and AIR 2 are still in progress for other platforms and that he personally would be shifting his efforts from the iPhone to Android, even for code written in an Apple-approved format. The Flash CS5 tools were 'proof' Flash could run on the iPhone, he said, but the closed ecosystem Apple is creating was "not something that [he] want[ed] to actively promote." Games he had written for the iPhone would not only be ported to Android but open-sourced.
"We are at the beginning of a significant change in the industry, and I believe that ultimately open platforms will win out over the type of closed, locked down platform that Apple is trying to create," he concluded.
TAGS :
iPhone, industry, iPhone SDK, software, developer, Google, Android, Adobe, Flash, AIR, Apple, iPhone 4.0
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2008
It won't matter whether a platform is
open or closed. The one that will triumph is the platform that pulls in the most money. Consumer users don't care about what goes on behind the scenes. They only know what works well for them. Can they get the content. Can they get the support. Are the products reliable.
Adobe might as well just give it up. Steve Jobs and Apple are building a mobile ecosystem so tight that it might be compared to a black hole. Once something is pulled in, it can't escape. Users, developers, advertisers, etc. Apple is not going to let them go to some other platform.
After watching the OS 4.0 keynote in its entirety I couldn't imagine how other platforms are going to be able to compete with Apple's mobile platform. Apple seems to be looking so far ahead with everything they do. Pundits wonder why Apple doesn't rush every feature into their first release. It seems Apple likes to wait until a feature is really ready as they can make it in order to keep user experience high. Amazing.