I just opened up XCode and had a look at the crash logs of my iPhone. I wonder how many of these apps are written in Objective-C… Oops, looks like the most problematic apps are written by Apple… 
And Skype, when are we going to get 3G calling and Push Notification? While you’re at it, please make it more stable too. Thanks.
The Wall Street Journal interviews Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen on Steve Jobs’ open letter on why Flash is not supported on the iPhone & iPad.
Video shot with Canon EOS Rebel T2i (550D) and 15-85mm lens. This version is scaled downed from the original full HD video.
A day before Apple announced the iPad, I was contacted by Lee Simmons who writes for DigitalMediaBuzz.com. Lee would like to hear my opinion about the Flash and iPhone controversy. Here is the transcript of my answer to him a week ago:
I’ve done applications such as weather, news, device user-interface, built-in device applications such as photo gallery and video player, TV/set-top box user interface and shopping apps, and of course entertainment.
How long has Quantumwave been in business? What particular markets do you serve?
The company started in 1993, and was incorporated in 1998. Our clients are very diverse: from small shops, to agencies, to larger companies and international enterprises. In recent years, most of our projects are device or mobile related, but we also work on projects for other markets including international non-profit organizations on rich internet applications, video and gaming…etc.
In general, what is your take on the Flash-iPhone controversy?
It’s a combination of who has control over app revenue, and potential performance issues of the previous generation of the Flash Lite player. The Apple App Store is the only official method to get applications, and Apple has full control over it. If they allow Flash to run on the iPhone or iPad, users can get to a lot of content – games, video, applications…etc. without paying Apple anything. This I think is the main reason. The other possible reason is a common misconception that the mobile version of the Flash player, Flash Lite, is slow and CPU-intensive that will drain the battery life. I have Flash Lite players on other mobile devices and have not noticed significant problems as some are lead to believe.
Adobe is working hard on the next generation of the Flash Player for devices: 10.1, and it includes a lot of improvements such as hardware acceleration. However, if the main reason is about revenue, I don’t think we’ll see Flash on the iPhone or iPad soon. I do hope the two companies can come to some sort of agreement though, because as much as Apple likes to say their devices provide the best web experience, a lot of web content are using Flash for not just video or games, but enterprise applications as well. Without Flash, the web experience on the iPhone or iPad is frustrating to say the least. And HTML5 isn’t solving all the problems any time soon either. It may be able to play video, but Flash is a lot more than video. From a developer’s point of view, the rich programming language and APIs of Flash across multiple platforms have no match from other solutions at this time.
Would you rather wait for the companies to work out their differences?
No, simply because I’d rather be active then passively waiting for something that may never happen. For a lot of developers, the iPhone market is potentially a great income source. But with the tight control by Apple, there are pros and cons developing for it. With Flash and the Open Screen initiative, Adobe is in partnership with most mobile and device companies, and the Flash Player will be available on more platforms and devices this year and the years to come. To be able to develop using a single solution that can be deployed on multiple platforms is the main advantage of Flash.
Are you inclined to move forward and create Flash apps that look good and function properly on iPhones?
Yes, definitely. At this moment, there are a few other solutions that let developers tab into the iPhone market without coding in iPhone’s native Objective-C (which carries some old baggages from the past), and some of these solutions are looking quite promising. With Adobe Flash CS5, a lot of developers can use their existing knowledge and create iPhone applications in a much shorter timeframe than coding in Objective-C. Even though the content are created in Flash, the end result is a native iPhone application. As the product evolves over time, I’m certain that we’ll see a lot of developers using Flash to create content for the iPhone/iPad market. However, there will always be a need for Objective-C when these solutions cannot provide the adequate result or performance. As a result, I’m open to all possible solutions and potential markets to achieve the best balance between ease of development and performance. It’ll be interesting to see how Apple reacts to more complaints that their most popular devices cannot play Flash content.
I’d also like to add that from a developer’s perspective, the object-oriented language (ActionScript) used to build Flash applications, games and whatnot is years ahead of the current browser-supported JavaScript. Richard Leggett wrote a great post on the subject, so check it out too.
Thanks to the Visitor Map plugin, here’s a map of recent visitor locations:
What surprises me is there is not a single visitor from inside China (excluding Hong Kong and Macau). Is this an issue with the geolocation database or the plugin? Or the Great Firewall of China blocks my site?
If you’re from China, can you please leave a comment that you can reach this site?
Update: I uploaded the latest image, and there are two dots at approximately Shanghai and Tianjin or Beijing!
From left to right: Dell 15.4″ XPS m1530, iMac 27″ quad-core, 13.3″ Macbook, Dell 24″ monitor (connected to the iMac as a second monitor).
The Macbook feels tiny. Using it for development outside of my office (e.g. at client’s office), especially when using Adobe suite, is frustrating. I often find myself swapping windows, opening and closing panels, and dragging things around. Spoiled by the new iMac screen resolution (2560×1440 + 1200×1920), compared to Macbook’s 1280×800 – that’s 5,990,400 total usable pixels vs. 1,024,000. However, my favorite screen is only at 480×320 – my iPhone 3GS (used to take this photo).
But these don’t come close to the life-size working iPhone costumes (YouTube video)!
When I asked about the possibility of a tool to convert Flash/ActionScript code to Cocoa/Objective-C, I got an “interesting idea” response from one of the Adobe employees. It seems Adobe is now doing the logical thing:
http://arno.org/arnotify/2009/10/max-2009-adobe-air-2-0-and-iphone-support/
Update: Oops, I guess that was a premature blog post. It’s now a 404.
Update 2: Adobe.com now has the information:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/
Update 3: Now they’re showing it at Adobe MAX live.
Update 4: Mike Chambers has a blog post on this. Also article at Adobe Developer Connection. And Mark Doherty wrote about it too.
Got questions? Check out the FAQ.
As expected, news of the upcoming Flash Player 10.1 has been announced at Adobe MAX conference in L.A. today.
Here are the features in the new version and demos of 10.1 running on two different devices.
Also announced: Google and RIM join the Open Screen Project.
Watch live stream of the Adobe keynote here, and follow MAX news with Adobe MAX Companion.
Flash Builder 4 beta 2 and Flash Catalyst beta 2 are now available at Adobe Labs among a few other new releases.
Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices is a full version of the Flash Player (i.e. not Flash Lite). Hardware acceleration, multi-touch, accelerometer… are supported.
It seems the last couple of years I spent in mobile Flash development is finally becoming mainstream! It is a nice refreshing change when regular news sites such as the BBC reports about this new Flash Player for mobile devices.
LOL: Robert Penner wrote a funny “recollection” of The Rebel Alliance, the fight with the evil empire, during a time when Twitter was called Flashcoder.
Count Moockoo, Skypenner, I think we’re missing Hall Solo.
Here’s the quantum archive if you’re interested. Good old days…
Obiyang, heh.
Today at FITC Mobile, Mark Doherty from Adobe gave a sneak peek of upcoming Flash mobile.
The most surprising bit was Flash Lite 4.0. Most developers I talked to thought Flash Lite 3.x is the last version of Flash Lite. As it turns out, FL4 is planned while Flash 10 for devices is also in the making.
According to Mark, Flash Lite 4.0 supports ActionScript 3, and it is a browser plugin (i.e. not standalone player). Same for Flash Player 10 for devices – a browser plugin (in his slide it was showing 10.1 in Device Central 3). AIR for mobile is the standalone player.
Flash Lite 4.0 is for slower, less powerful and memory-constraint devices, and Flash 10 is for more powerful devices, possibly with hardware graphics acceleration.
Mark also shown Device Central 3. It supports some hardware emulation such as accelerometer and geolocation. Custom device profiles can also be created easily in Device Central 3.
Another upcoming tool is SWFPack, a mobile packager (created in AIR) for S60 3rd edition and up, and Windows Mobile 5 & 6. It builds deployment bits (.sis and .cab) for the two platforms with just a few clicks.
Update: Mark clarified that “(Flash Lite 4 is) targeted as a browser plugin and standalone player for brew devices.”
At the Samsung booth, I had the chance to play with the Omnia II (to be released later this year). The 3.7″ AMOLED screen at 480×800 is simply the most beautiful device screen I’ve seen to-date. This phone’s OS is Windows Mobile 6.5, and Samsung has implemented a much nicer UI (TouchWiz 2.0) that reminds me a bit of the Android interface. Overall operation seems quite decent, although I’m not a big fan of the haptic touchscreen. Apparently the Omnia II has 2 CPUs, one for radio frequency, and one for UI and apps. And it has a dedicated graphics accelerator. There was also an Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy. Unfortunately, both phones don’t have the standalone Flash player, but there is supposed to be a “hidden” Flash Lite player without exposed public API for things like widgets.
Coming “real soon now” (Sept 13-14) here in Toronto (Canada) is FITC Mobile, the first ever mobile event hosted by the same folks who started FITC 7 years ago.
When I first heard about this conference, my reaction was “Finally!”
Ever since I gave my first presentation at the first FITC back in 2002 and other conferences such as Flash Forward and Adobe MAX, my topics shifted from OOP, design patterns, ActionScript programming to mobile and devices in the last few years.
For about 4 years, I worked mostly on different mobile and devices projects, while still handling regular web application projects. As I’ve mentioned in my talks, the mobile market will only get bigger. There are more people using mobile devices than computers, and this is especially true for some countries where the infrastructure for wireless is more advanced than landline networks.
Although the mobile market hasn’t been adopted as fast as anticipated in the last few years, the scene has changed dramatically since the Apple iPhone and App Store came along. Now with Apple, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Google, Microsoft, Palm and others all fighting for the mobile market share, mobile is finally getting the attention of developers, companies and consumers.
It is with great pleasure to see speakers from different parts of the world, from different companies and platforms to come to Toronto for this two-day event. Coverage includes Apple iPhone, Google Android, Nokia & Symbian, RIM Blackberry, Palm Pre, Microsoft Windows Mobile, mobile marketing and more.
Check out the FITC Mobile site for more details.
Corona: Another 3rd-party iPhone development SDK is now open to developers for pre-beta testing.
One thing that sets this SDK apart: The engineers are “former Adobe mobile software veterans” who worked on the mobile Flash ecosystem.
And no, the programming language is not ActionScript or JavaScript, but is Lua - a simple scripting language that should be easy for ActionScript developers to pickup. One thing uncertain to me is whether Corona is generating native Objective-C code from Lua code, or simply interprets the Lua code at runtime (I certainly hope it’s not the latter).
At the moment, there is no public distribution build. The only way to test a project is by using the Corona Simulator that comes with the SDK. Corona is still at its early stage, and the final product is targeting end of Q3 2009.
As Apple has been known to reject apps for unknown reasons, many PhoneGap developers have encountered the most-feared notice that their app is rejected. One possible reason is PhoneGap relies on the Safari JavaScript engine, and JavaScript code is interpreted at runtime, which is not allowed by the Apple SDK agreement.
For me, there are some important questions:
Nevertheless, it is good to see more 3rd-party tools and SDKs for iPhone development.
Update: Today (June 24), this article talks about Corona. “When the developer has his Lua code the way he wants it, he submits it to the Ansca Web site, where it will be compiled into an iPhone application ready to submit to Apple’s App Store.”
Even though it seems to simplify the workflow, this may not be ideal because:
Hopefully Ansca would address these concerns in their FAQ or forum soon.
After coming back from Seoul for less than a week, I was in San Jose for the 360|iDev iPhone conference. To keep this short, the conference was really great – not only was it affordable, the sessions were informative, and it was a great community event for networking too. In many other conferences, companies spend considerable efforts in pitching their products or services; I saw a lot less fluff at 360|iDev, and a lot more substance.
It was also great to meet my old friend Sam Wan again. He found out about the conference only a few days before it started from my twitter, and decided to join. You can read about his comments at his new blog.
Another person I met was Rob Toole, who is also a Flash mobile developer, now developing a financial app for the iPhone. Rob invited me and a few other folks to talk about mobile development, the conference, and has posted it as a podcast on iTunes.
A big surprise was from Bill Perry, ex-Adobe mobile evangelist who now works at Nokia in Mountain View. It was good to see Bill again. And who would expect to receive a 5800 XpressMusic phone at an iPhone conference? Thanks Bill for the first S60 5th edition touchscreen phone, so I can start developing for it.
Another ex-Adobe friend I met was Sumi Lim, who now works at Samsung just down the road from eBay where the conference was held. It was really great to chat with Sumi outside of conferences. She’s now working on the Samsung Mobile Innovator program for Windows Mobile. Check it out!
What I got from this conference was more than the technical, but also the marketing and distribution of iPhone applications and games, and met with fellow developers. Needless to say, I can’t recommend this conference enough. Keep an eye on their next event!
For those who haven’t been following my tweets, my flights from Toronto to Seoul via Chicago started with long delays on the runway due to snowstorm in Toronto, and the plane had to be de-iced twice before it was safe for takeoff. Instead of departing at 7:50am, it got off just after 10:00am.
The connecting flight in Chicago was to depart at 11:20am, by the time I stepped off the plane it was already 11:13, with 7 minutes left to go from one terminal to another by monorail. Thinking there was no way I could catch the second flight (which required check-in again at another airline), I walked quickly towards the next terminal. Then I saw a few people running, and they all looked like they were catching the same flight. By the time I arrived at the check-in counter, the staff were calling the plane to wait for us. Then we all ran through customs and to the gate, and got on the connecting flight to Seoul. That was quite an exercise running through two terminals after a sleepless night!
By the time I arrived in Seoul another 14+ hours later, my lugguage was nowhere to be found. Well, not just mine but all those who were coming from the same flight in Toronto. So I’m now without luggage, tired and ready to sleep after 28 hours of traveling, waiting, more traveling… There’s a full day ahead starting early in the morning. Time to rest.