Apple vs. Adobe Flash … what does it mean for web designers?
April 10, 2010
If you are a web designers/developer or just a geek, you’ve probably heard about the recent ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe.
The fight revolves around Adobe’s Flash and Apple’s iPhone and now the new iPad – basically Apple has blocked both these devices from running the Flash player and thus, any Flash delivered content, whether it be video or applications … can anyone say NO Flash games!
Apple says that they blocked Flash because Flash runs terribly on Mac OS. This is true. But recent events tells me that there is more to it than protecting iPhone and iPad users from the evils of the Flash player ….
“Apple Gives Adobe The Finger With Its New iPhone SDK Agreement”
This title (form a Techcrunch article) tells it all. You see, not only does Apple prevent Flash from running on iPhone and iPad, they are even blocking Flash-created programs that would then be ported to (translated into …) native iPhone-code based applications!! This is truly a poke in the teeth … from Apple to Adobe.
… Apple is blocking Flash with their new license agreement – basically, applications must be “originally written†in C/C++/Objective-C:
3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
I don’t normally swear on my blog … but WTF!?
Bottom line for web designers and developers:
We is screwed! Especially if you are Flash developer …
😉
Ok, not really … but read on for details how to get around this mess.
Apple basically want’s to kill Flash … this is clear. They want to kill it because they want to replace it. This is nothing new for Apple, they nailed Adobe with Finalcut years ago … and Apple basically took over the video editing market … took it away from Adobe.
More evidence:
Apple just announced a new tool for creating HTML 5-based interactivity, I’m not sure of the details but it just ads more fuel to the fire. There’s going to be a battle and nerds will take sides; in the end though, everyone will loose.
So what should web designers do?
Code is code and good design and good design – continue to work on your basics:
- design skills
- clean modular code and site structures.
- AND continue to learn programming languages and techniques.
As I have been saying for years, don’t get married to a particular language or technology. Instead, try to concentrate on the key fundamentals and become language/technology agnostic … and use what works best for the project at hand. Personally, I’ve used 8-9 languages over the years to build web applications; I would look at the project and then choose the language, rather than trying to shoehorn everything into same technological box.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
