last100 » Flash Player http://www.last100.com Tracking the digital lifestyle Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:31:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 Forget iPhone, Adobe wants to put Flash on the telly http://www.last100.com/2009/04/20/adobe-wants-flash-o-the-telly/ http://www.last100.com/2009/04/20/adobe-wants-flash-o-the-telly/#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:59:15 +0000 Steve O'Hear http://www.last100.com/?p=4178 adobe_flash_screen_shotJust like everybody else these days, Adobe has its sights set on the living room. Today the company announced a version of its Adobe Flash Platform designed to run on Internet-connected televisions, set-top boxes, and Blu-ray players, with the aim of making it easier to deliver online video and other web-based content – think widgets – to the TV.

To achieve this, Adobe has already recruited a range of hardware and content partners, including Broadcom, Comcast, Intel, STMicroelectronics, Netflix, The New York Times Company, and Disney. The first devices to support the specially optimized version of Flash are expected to ship in the second half of 2009, says Adobe.

As much as Flash is entrenched on personal computers, especially for online video, like with mobile phones (still no Flash support on iPhone), Adobe is yet to become the dominant standard for delivering Internet content into the living room. Others competing in the space include Microsoft with its Mediaroom platform aimed at Telcos, and now with Silverlight, a direct Flash competitor.

See also: Microsoft’s Internet TV strategy: today and in the future

Then there’s Yahoo with its “Widgets Channel”, which is also being backed by Intel who are obviously hedging their bets, and recently entered the wild on televisions from Samsung. Boutique gadget maker Chumby has re-invented itself for the living room, partnering with chip maker Broadcom to make it easy for consumer electronics companies to embed its widget platform into Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. And even Google is eyeing up the space, with rumors that a set-top box platform similar to Android is in the works, while the company has begun publicly experimenting with Internet TV widgets via a partnership with Panasonic.

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]]> http://www.last100.com/2009/04/20/adobe-wants-flash-o-the-telly/feed/ 0 Hope for Flash on iPhone? New Mac version runs 3 x faster http://www.last100.com/2008/07/07/adobe-flash-player-10-onto-iphone/ http://www.last100.com/2008/07/07/adobe-flash-player-10-onto-iphone/#comments Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:34:03 +0000 Steve O'Hear http://www.last100.com/?p=2078 Hope for Flash on iPhone? New Mac version runs 3 x fasterIt’s something Mac users have lived with for years: the version of Adobe’s Flash Player for OSX runs much less efficiently than its Windows counterpart. Perhaps then, we shouldn’t have been all that surprised to hear Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ explanation of why the iPhone doesn’t support Flash. Simply put, it runs too darn slow, while the cut-down version designed specifically for mobile devices – known as Flash Lite – isn’t fully-featured enough to grace the screen of Apple’s device. However, Adobe could be about to put its house in order with regards to support for the Mac, leading to speculation that the iPhone could be next.

According to Adobe developer Tinic Uro, the latest beta of Adobe Flash Player 10 running on Mac OSX is significantly faster than previous versions. “If you have followed GUIMark at all you will notice that this version of the player runs this benchmark substantially better on OSX than any previous Flash Player version”, writes Uro on his personal blog. “It should be up to 3 times faster”.

Just in the same way that improvements to Apple’s desktop version of its Safari web browser eventually trickle down to the company’s mobile version, it’s logical to assume that a more efficient version of Flash for Mac helps Adobe’s case in persuading Apple to sanction porting Flash onto the iPhone, as both platforms share the same core operating system. However, it’s far from clear if “3 times faster” on Mac OSX translates into Flash running “fast enough” on the iPhone.

Also see: Who needs Flash on iPhone more? Adobe or Apple?

And, as we’ve argued in the past, the inefficiency of Flash, whilst real, maybe a smokescreen for the real reason Jobs doesn’t want to see Adobe’s software on iPhone anytime soon.

Instead, this is really a battle over whose technology becomes the choice for those developing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for mobile devices. Adobe hopes it will be the company’s Flash-based AIR platform, while Jobs is intent on ensuring that nothing detracts from the iPhone’s newly released Software Development Kit (SDK) or Safari’s support for emerging Web standards that enable RIA features such as video/animation and offline storage.

Photo illustration by Gizmodo.

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