iPhone workshop sparks grassroots development
While Apple has yet to host any programming conferences of its own for the iPhone, the unofficial iPhoneDevCamp has already produced a collection of web apps that signaled a quick start to the development community.
In some cases, the iPhone's limits have proven frustrating, which organizers themselves revealed in the BarCamp-inspired gathering's opening speech (PDF). Although Apple's web interface follows web standards to the letter and includes the promised ties to calling, e-mail, and maps, any non-Apple plugins — including Flash, Java, and SVG vector images — were already known to be unsupported as of July.
The iPhone's ability to dynamically resize the browser window depending on the physical angle has also created a unique problem for coders who want to fit their site to the iPhone's 320x480 screen: site designers have to include a special exception that detects a change in the site resolution, developers found.
Nevertheless, some developers have already created miniature web programs that bypass several of the perceived limits. Although many of the programs fall into the categories of web games or equivalents to Mac OS X Dashboard widgets, a few utilities have effectively tried to replace full-fledged programs that would otherwise be needed.
Among the examples readied for the weekend were SonicLiving + iTMS, which lets its users browse, sample, and queue up songs to buy later through the iTunes Store's shopping cart method; iPhogo, a Flickr-like utility that uploads iPhone photos to the web through e-mail; and Telekinesis, a remote control suite that steers iTunes music and captures images from the desktop or the iSight camera. Many of these utilities often require a workaround such as other web servers or Mac apps installed outside of the actual phone.
But while the software on display at iPhoneDevCamp has represented a significant step forward for expanding the iPhone beyond its 12 core programs, Adobe itself disclaimed the event from the beginning by placing some of the responsibility for nurturing the phone's development community at Apple's door.
"We suggest that folks speak to Apple directly about what technologies the iPhone will support and integrate," the company says in its FAQ for the event. "Naturally we believe that support for Flash is essential for any mobile device that wants to deliver a great experience for customers."
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Adobe says:
"We suggest that folks speak to Apple directly about what technologies the iPhone will support and integrate," the company says in its FAQ for the event. "Naturally we believe that support for Flash is essential for any mobile device that wants to deliver a great experience for customers."
Oops, slip of the toungue. What they meant to say was:
"Naturally, we believe that Flash on iPhone is in Adobe's best interest, and we want all of you developers to bug Apple about it."
Flash sucks CPU, and therefore battery life. And 90% of the time it's a big waste of bandwidth and attention too. Gee, just what I wanted, scrolling, animating, flashing crappy ads -- now on my iPhone too! The longer Apple waits before putting Flash on the iPhone, the better, IMO. In fact, "never" would be a great release date as far as I'm concerned.
Not to mention that Apple is pushing h.264 as a video format standard, and are going to great lengths to get youtube videos re-encoded. Why would they want to include Flash on the iPhone when that would detract from that movement?
Not to mention that Apple is pushing h.264 as a video format standard, and are going to great lengths to get youtube videos re-encoded. Why would they want to include Flash on the iPhone when that would detract from that movement?
Ask Steve Jobs, he went on record to say that Flash support was a possibility, even though Flash is not necessary to show YouTube videos.
Jobs: ?Java?s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It?s this big heavyweight ball and chain.?
Markoff: ?Flash??
Jobs: ?Well, you might see that.?
Markoff: ?What about YouTube??
Jobs: ?Yeah, YouTube?of course. But you don?t need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get ?em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec.?
Oops, slip of the toungue. What they meant to say was:
"Naturally, we believe that Flash on iPhone is in Adobe's best interest, and we want all of you developers to bug Apple about it."
Flash sucks CPU, and therefore battery life. And 90% of the time it's a big waste of bandwidth and attention too. Gee, just what I wanted, scrolling, animating, flashing crappy ads -- now on my iPhone too! The longer Apple waits before putting Flash on the iPhone, the better, IMO. In fact, "never" would be a great release date as far as I'm concerned.
Not to mention that Apple is pushing h.264 as a video format standard, and are going to great lengths to get youtube videos re-encoded. Why would they want to include Flash on the iPhone when that would detract from that movement?
it is true that there is a lot of crap content that is made with Flash, but there is a lot of quality stuff too. For advanced media rich interfaces, it is the leading delivery platform - mainly because of it portability... this is a promise that can be made with multiple platforms, multiple browsers - not something that is capable by Java, JScript, or any other competing technology, with the possible exception of MS Silverlight (if not yet totally portable, will be soon).
Your argument for not supporting Flash is sort of like saying... hey developers, we want you to stick to Applescript to make applications and stay away from Obj-C. (example used only for illustrative purposes) There are a lot of apps out there made with Obj-C that are buggy and crash. Although this is a true statement, it ignores the fact that in order to do more powerful things, one has to use the more advanced tools and the fact that there are many very powerful prime time apps made with Obj-C.
With Flash, web developers can make a sight that autodetects the appropriate resolution and make a single target for all Flash compliant devices. iPhone should be able to run full Flash Player 9 and not have to run Flash Lite. Otherwise, you are asking Flash developers, who in reality are the standard that websites are built upon, (for Media rich sites) to make an exception for the iPhone so that we have just "iPhone" sites, and then other more grown up sites for full Flash compliant browsers.
...and here is why supporting Adobe is supporting Apple's health. If market share falls away from Adobe, it is going to be gained by Microsoft Silverlight. If Apple does not support Adobe, they are in effect almost directly supporting Microsoft.
For some people, Flash means video... specifically YouTube video. In this specific case, Apple has happened to shoved enough money into the machine to effect a change. Personally, I could care less about YouTube, almost never watch it, and I sure don't really want to see more advertisements... yet I find a compelling reason to have Flash support so I do get the "Real Internet" and mainly, because of my attraction to the Flash/Flex programmable capabilities of the runtime for RIA - effectively equivalent to the power of traditional applications, especially if the executable can be stored local on the iPhone's memory, rather than having to be served remotely.
it is true that there is a lot of crap content that is made with Flash, but there is a lot of quality stuff too. For advanced media rich interfaces, it is the leading delivery platform - mainly because of it portability... this is a promise that can be made with multiple platforms, multiple browsers - not something that is capable by Java, JScript, or any other competing technology, with the possible exception of MS Silverlight (if not yet totally portable, will be soon).
Your argument for not supporting Flash is sort of like saying... hey developers, we want you to stick to Applescript to make applications and stay away from Obj-C. (example used only for illustrative purposes) There are a lot of apps out there made with Obj-C that are buggy and crash. Although this is a true statement, it ignores the fact that in order to do more powerful things, one has to use the more advanced tools and the fact that there are many very powerful prime time apps made with Obj-C.
With Flash, web developers can make a sight that autodetects the appropriate resolution and make a single target for all Flash compliant devices. iPhone should be able to run full Flash Player 9 and not have to run Flash Lite. Otherwise, you are asking Flash developers, who in reality are the standard that websites are built upon, (for Media rich sites) to make an exception for the iPhone so that we have just "iPhone" sites, and then other more grown up sites for full Flash compliant browsers.
...and here is why supporting Adobe is supporting Apple's health. If market share falls away from Adobe, it is going to be gained by Microsoft Silverlight. If Apple does not support Adobe, they are in effect almost directly supporting Microsoft.
For some people, Flash means video... specifically YouTube video. In this specific case, Apple has happened to shoved enough money into the machine to effect a change. Personally, I could care less about YouTube, almost never watch it, and I sure don't really want to see more advertisements... yet I find a compelling reason to have Flash support so I do get the "Real Internet" and mainly, because of my attraction to the Flash/Flex programmable capabilities of the runtime for RIA - effectively equivalent to the power of traditional applications, especially if the executable can be stored local on the iPhone's memory, rather than having to be served remotely.
Couldn't agree with you more. Many people think that h.264 is somehow going to "magically" replace Flash (try building a site entirely in h.264 while handling data from a php file, xml, etc.) or because Apple had YouTube make copies (remember the YouTube site still uses Flash) of their videos in the h.264 format as well as in the Flash FLV format, that somehow this meant that Apple is never going to support Flash. Nothing could be further from reality. The iPhone was not released supporting Flash because their wasn't a version of Flash available that wouldn't eat a good chunk of iPhone's battery life (as well as why 3G wasn't supported among other reasons). H.264 was used since it relies mostly on hardware/software and uses a lot less battery compared to FLV video or Flash in general. Rumor has it that there is a version of Flash coming doesn't the pike that uses a less CPU power and is made specifically for the iPhone's OS X. I guess we'll just have to wait and see on that one.
Flash is much more than animated cartoon sites and crappy banners. When are people going to start realizing that? If that's all there was to them, why do you think that the omission of Flash on the iPhone has been one of the top 3 complaints on the iPhone? So people can see animated cartoons and crappy banners? I don't think so, I don't think so . . .
That is all I am going to say on the subject because every time I get more into this subject, I get railed by other members and told I should "upgrade my resume" (being that I am a Flash developer) since "Flash is on it's way out." So I will stop here and say no more.
oh wow, iPhogo is getting a little attention. i've been a member here for awhile but not an active poster... i'm one of the guys workin on this side project.
we had the idea last week... my buddy Dimitry programmed it and attended the iPhone dev session. what is currently on the site is a very, very rough framework of what we have planned... we're switching hosts right now because it's been pretty slow today.
thanks for link AI!! We should have some really cool stuff next week... <3