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.

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)!

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.

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.

Count Moockoo, Skypenner, I think we’re missing Hall Solo.

Here’s the quantum archive if you’re interested. Good old days…

Obiyang, heh.

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.