geekosystem

Flash, specifcally mobile Flash, was effectively sentenced to death a while back. The first inklings came when Abode put out their own non-Flash media tool "Edge," and then was confirmed when the company dropped 750 employees and halted all development of mobile versions of Flash, ostensibly forever. It's not until now, however, that we're seeing Flash really start to crumble. Android, once open to the protocol, will no longer be supporting Adobe Flash with its newest version, Jelly Bean.

Occupy Flash, a weirdly misnamed movement presumably riding on the coattails of the much more appropriately named Occupy Wall Street movement, is encouraging users to unequivocally uninstall Adobe's Flash player. It all comes back to the fact that Adobe has recently ended mobile Flash development in order to head in a more HTML5 direction. That being the case, Occupy Flash supporters are uninstalling Flash in hopes of forcing Adobe in a more HTML5 direction. Because it's certainly not headed that way already. No, not at all.

For a long while, iOS devices and Adobe Flash were like oil and water. Now, those days are over. Adobe has just revealed Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 and Adobe Flash Access 3.0 which will allow you to access Flash content on your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad. While Apple has never been a fan of Flash, preferring to back competing HTML5 technology, Flash is now coming to their devices whether they want it to or not. Flash Media Server will allow publishers to stream Flash content to users without any sort adjustment to the devices or the Safari browser. Instead of using the actual device to render the stream, Flash Media Server will do it instead, preventing Flash content from totally devouring your battery life. Flash Media Server is now available for purchase for by publishers for a cool $4,500. Get to it guys, I've got several years of back-catalog Flash games I need to play on my iPod post-haste. (via BGR)

It appears that along with everyone else, (read: Apple) Adobe is finally making moves to abandon Flash as well. Adobe's new tool, Edge, still encourages the same "flashy" content you've grown to love, except that if Edge does it, it'll be CSS, Javascript or HTML5, not Flash. While it may be easy, or tempting, to call Edge a Flash-killer, Edge is not intended to put Flash out of its misery or even to encourage developers to switch over to HTML5, but rather open up a new development path while Flash development presumably hits a wall.

For the time being, there are a number of things Flash can do better than HTML5, which makes it an important part of the web, so it's not going to completely disappear any time soon. Still, Adobe seems to be well aware that developers will eventually abandon Flash for HTML5 and while they don't intend to expedite that process, they are doing what they can to grab a piece of the new pie.

Ever since Apple began taking over the world, Adobe's Flash has been under a lot more scrutiny, considering Apple overlord Steve Jobs has openly decried it in favor of HTML5. There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the Flash vs. HTML5 debate, so the team over at Code Computerlove decided to put it to a more practical test: Flash vs HTML5 in the form of Pong, with the left side being Flash and the right side being HTML5.

A statement released on Apple's website today explains that they'll be easing up on all iOS developmental tool restrictions.

For all of the tension in Steve Jobs' dissertation on his antipathy to Flash, the nut, I believe, is this:

Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products.

Each of the two companies has known multiple iterations. Apple has had three: the Jobs (and Wozniak) era ('76 - '85), the non-Jobs era ('85 - '97) and the re-Jobs era ('97 - now). Adobe, two: the John Warnock/Chuck Geschke era ('82 - '00), and the post-Warnock/Geschke era ('00 - now). The "golden era" Jobs refers to above encapsulates a large part of that 1982 - 1985 overlap (and somewhat beyond), with the development of PostScript, the Macintosh, and the Apple LaserWriter. The companies built desktop publishing in concert: Apple, the hardware side, Adobe, the software. The critique Jobs makes in the quote above is acidic.

This morning, Adobe announced the coming release of the eagerly-awaited Creative Suite 5, which is available for preorder on their website and is expected to ship within 30 days. This means, among other things, that Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Flash Catalyst are getting their CS5 dues.