Like many people in the tech industry, I have read Steve Job’s opinion of not having the Flash player on its devices. Some of his points are valid, others not. Consider this article:
http://jessewarden.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-on-flash-correcting-the-lies.html ,
http://l33.me/apples-ceo-entered-an-insanity-plea-as-the-re (From Flash and Flex Designers Magazine May 2010), and
from an e-learning development perspective: http://www.upsidelearning.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/05/is-html5-ready-for-elearning-development
For a visual, here:Â http://theflashblog.com/?p=1975 This debunks Job’s argument that Flash does not have multitouch capability.
I think there is a lot of media attention and Jobs is leveraging the internet to make its claims and people believe them. We know that the web produces good content as well as bad content. So I don’t think we are able to get the whole picture of the situation. I think that the public is veering towards Jobs’ view without examining all the facts.
Another thing is the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Apple into its developer licensing.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1604061/apple-microsoft
This means that Apple will only let developers create applications with their own tools instead of third party tools. So what does this mean for a developer? You have to create one app for Apple iProducts and use tools like Flash for everything else.
The advantage for Jobs is that Apple gets to control the App store by determining which app goes on and comes off. Enabling Flash on said iProducts would probably put a dent on the iStore app market. Who would need to buy a game when you can play it for free when developed in Flash on a website? It’s simply makes marketing sense in order for Apple to generate its revenue. Who can blame them?
As for HTML5, Adobe is supporting that too. Grant Skinner commented “Why can’t we love HTML5 and Flash at the same time too?” But currently, HTML5 is rough on the edges. (It’s currently a draft specification not final. And knowing how the ECMA4 specification failed when Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies could not make an agreement, it may be a while before HTML5 is finalized and how it is implemented for every browser.) Perhaps it will be a good alternative for video delivery for the future. Still, Flash (or Silverlight for that matter), can produce rich applications and would probably still innovate and push technologies like JQuery and HTML5 to update their APIs.
I observe a lot of negative comments mostly from Apple Fanboys who detest Flash. (Maybe I am a Flash fanboy.) But Flash has been saving me a lot of grief to create web based sites and applications without having to know the DOM intricacies between Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera, and so on. (Well, I know this is resolved by using JQuery.) I just think the software that Adobe produces are very cool and I enjoy developing with them.
I don’t own an iPhone or an iPad. I think they are really cool. My kids love them. Developers who make applications for these devices are of excellent quality. I also think that developing games with Unity that can port to these devices is also a big plus for 3D gaming for these devices. It would be a shame if Apple tells them they can’t develop applications for their platform.
So far from my experience, Windows OS platform dominates the e-learning market, so owning a Mac is a nice to have. (This changed when E-learning suite 2 was announced yesterday which now supports the MAC OS.) Besides, Adobe has been a huge supporter of this market. To me, it would be a a bonus if I could develop e-learning apps in any kind of OS. So to develop iApps with just one development environment – namely Flash CS5 is a bonus.
Just my opinion.
I always had this love for Fireworks since it’s inception along with Dreamweaver back in the Macromedia days. A lot of designers that I have met have a vague idea about its use in web development. To me, I think using Photoshop for web design is plain overkill or bloated software that’s useful generally for print based production. (Of course, this is a false assumption. I find it very interesting in video and 3D development. I happen to also use onOne Software’s Perfect Mask 4 software for background image replacement.) Fireworks has its place particularly for web design, wireframing, Flex skin development, and much more…