Steve Jobs is still trying to kill Flash

On Apple website, Steve Jobs is still trying to kill Flash.
But, times after times, it becomes more and more stupid.

The first part of this hate-letter is the perfect introduction of what you'll read after : perfect non-sense! "Hey Adobe, we almost raised you so ... shut up and call me Dad/God!" ;)

We see here Steve Jobs has one and only enemy : Flash.
How can you honestly say Flash is closed and IPhone is open? Seriously...I still don't realize he actually said this !
I really like how it uses the delayed date of release of Flash 10.1 for mobile.
And for video, I can't read another word from him when I saw QuickTime.
But be cool, every website will soon reencode their videos to H264 since Steve Jobs asks it.
And it's not more honest to say actual web games won't work on touch screen....Of course, they won't work...they were MADE for mouse based play!
Let us me make games for touch based systems and you'll see....
(on this point, I'm actually testing a LOT of touch games and I could say a very few are really enjoyable...)

So, skip all these parts and jump directly to the 6th!
It's certainly the only interesting one (if you forget it's from Steve Jobs) because we can really gain something from it (the previous ones were only Adobe-Apple war rockets)
In fact, it's more than just Steve Jobs asking us if Flash (for any platform) is REALLY interesting....but at this question, I'll return "and what about Java ?"
So:
Are you for middleware or not ?
Are you for develop one and release everywhere ?
Are you for optimized code or for 'work-everywhere' code ?

Look at video game which are developed to be able to release a PC, PS3 and X360 version from the (almost) same code...they are slow and far to be optimized...
It reminds me the time of MSDOS, with the 3DFX version of the game or the Gravis version....everything made in pure ASM.....

Interesting...really...I think everyone should think about it BEFORE to make a choice...
Else, you can skip this stupid letter and go back to what you LOVE to make what ever it is, Flash or IPhone games, I don't mind. Just take pleasure to make them.

Flash Lite 4 AS3 reference

As stated in a comment on my previous post, the FL4 livedocs is available from 1 month now.
While testing Flash Builder 4 (I won't comment here about the good and bad thing of this product), I noticed you can filter the AS3 reference to one or more runtimes.
Flash Lite 4 is one of them !
Good thing if you dev in Flex but want to port it to FL4 (I know, it should be Slider's job).

So, we now have all the docs....We're now waiting for Slider and FL4 based phones (HTC Desire?)

A frenchy in San Francisco

Sorry, I couldn't miss this one : the infamous Thibault Imbert will move to San Francisco to join the Flash Player product management team!

Congratulations and good luck to him

Flash Lite 4.0 ?

Last week, while I was downloading the HTC Desire alpha ROM, I read Mark post about it.

the HTC Desire ROM (shown below) is running a new alpha version of Flash Lite that supports AS3

Some days later, Alessandro shared this interesting post about the several versions of Flash available on Android.

It's now clear that a new Flash Lite is coming 'soon'.
What is it (apart to support AS3, alleluia) ? For which platform ? Available throught CS4 or CS5 ?
Like I reported previously, it's strange how Adobe isn't sharing the information on FLite 4.0...Perhaps to avoid the confusion with FP10.1 ?

I only hope one thing : to see FL4 (and FP10.1) working on Android emulator!
Actually, apart an old S60 SDK which let you play FL1.1, I never found an emulator (nokia, se, android,...) able to play FL files

and no, unfortunatly, the HTC Desire ROM doesn't work on Android emulator, since it's not for the right ARM processor :(

Why the Nokia OTA isn't a great feature

I recently got a N97 at work.
I won't talk about how I was deceived by the S60 5th UI/UX (if it was mine, I'll be happy to change it for an Android or even an Iphone!) but about a feature I first thought was a great improvement : OTA firmware update

We know how much this feature is needed to solve the problem we, FLite developers, had with the buggy N95 and 5800XM.
"No problem, just update your firmware and it will rock"

Sure. But it isn't that simple, it's even IMPOSSIBLE for some people...like me :(

Currently, the N97 firmware available in France is the 21.0.045 (from http://www.nokia.fr/support/logiciels/mise-a-jour-de-lappareil)
I have the 11.0.021 so I should be able to update it to fix some of the issues I had (what is this pityful sensitivity ?! what is this pityful UX ?!)

Unforunatly, I tried OTA and the Nokia Updater without success
Oh, sorry, actually it updated something : all the games I moved on the "Games" menu cames back to the "Applications" menu...GRRRRRRRR!!
So, in fine, it didn't update. Why ? it seems it's because my phone is locked to SFR (Vodaphone) and the firmware too!
So unless SFR/Nokia released a SFR dedicated 21.xx firmware, I can't update...

I really hope I missing some point but, anyway, the real problem is : if I was unable to update my phone (for whatever the reason is), do you really think a 'common' user would get a better result ?
I doubt....and ever worst, he thinks he have the latest version !

So I have to admit I can't rely on the available firmware and tell 'update your phone to play my game' : I had to make my game works on ANY firmare version.

Some month ago, people talked about what is the better : FL update by firmware or by AMP. I'll really miss AMP !

Lesson learned.

Nokia API Bridge

Another thing I missed is the Nokia API bridge.

When I read the presentation of the technologie, 2 things came on my mind :
Capuchin and KuneriLite

KuneriLite adds functionnality throught plugins
Capuchin "enables developers to bridge the Java™ ME and Adobe® Flash Lite™"
Nokia API bridge "provides a plug-in mechanism that can be used to make features of Symbian and third-party native Symbian applications available to Java applications, web apps, and Adobe Flash Lite content"

You can't create your own plugin on KuneriLite
YOu can extend Capuchin throught the Service API
You can extend Nokia API bridge throught a Plugin API

KuneriLite supports any S60 phones (?)
Capuchin supports Java Platform JP-8.4 SE phones
Nokia API supports any S60 FP1+ phones (ie FL2 phones)...even SE, Samsung..?

So my question is "WHY CAN'T THEY MAKE A COMMON TECHNOLOGY?!" ;)

Flash 10.1 for mobile

MWC ended and Mark Doherty made today a resume of all the great announcements made by Adobe (or others) regarding Flash on mobile....but no Flash Lite 4 ?! is it dead ?!

To that, I'll also add 2 posts from James Wards
The first one show an OPTIMIZED version of Tour de Flex for mobile
It's important to notice the "OPTIMIZED" word.
I read all over the web several comments like "ok, Flash10 and AIR are on mobile and so what ? do you REALLY think my web app will be useable on a small screen ?"
I personnaly think Adobe isn't clear enought on this point, it's more like if they say "your app will work AS IS on mobile", which is true...but which UX ?!
For ex, if you look at the video of Michael Chaize and Thibault Imbert , you'll notice how Michael got some problems to click some buttons.
He replied with a very interesting point : "the click area must be at least 34pixels radius"
Hopefully, as Alessandro pointed out some days ago, Adobe released a lot of documents on Mobile tips on the DevNet...which I didn't read yet


The second post is about performance : the "WOW!" effect on mobile !