5 Flash apps that will blow your mind: http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/06/08/5-flash-applications-that-will-blow-your-mind/

Flash Showcase: http://swfhead.com/flash/

The expressive nature of these apps is amazing. The variety of interfaces catering to the specific needs of the user using the apps is stunning. That’s what happens when you don’t have overlords telling you how to build your app or what it should look like – creativity!

Apple has it’s GUI standards but really locks down what kind of interfaces you can make (sans games) on iOS4. Their interface is nice but I don’t think it’s the begin all/ end all of UI or UX design. Apple really limits what the user can choose to experience in it’s drive for “simplicity”. Simplicity has it’s merits for sure but it can get pretty boring/stagnant at times. It’s getting very cult-ish over there.

http://gawker.com/5539717/steve-jobs-offers-world-freedom-from-porn?skyline=true&s=i

What I found interesting is Steve Jobs whole hearted belief that he knows whats best for everyone else even if that means taking choice away. He believes that he needs to save us from  batteries, porn, privacy leaks, and multimedia apps. Currently with an iDevice you must use 1 of 3 languages to program native apps. You must by a developer license, you must buy a mac to run xcode, and then you must cross your fingers hoping that the app gets approved via a set of undefined ever changing rules Apple dreams up. Even then they may just deny you because you’ve crossed an invisible line of closeness to the rules:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20005000-233.html

Also based on the email exchange Steve Jobs feels that people who do not “create” something should not criticize Apple’s platform. I guess Steve just doesn’t have a very thick skin. Going to art school taught me that you should actually listen to the criticism as it may hold some truths your denying to yourself.

It all feels very “1984″ at this point. Apple decides what their users do on their iDevices. To developers Steve argues that we can create whatever we want in html and bypass Apple’s lock down. What he fails to talk about is that without Flash any highly interactive, multimedia web apps are close to impossible technically for a reasonable cost.

HTML5/JS/SVG/CANVAS have potential but:

Html5 is not consistent across browsers (desktop/os/device variations):

1. http://caniuse.com/?utm_medium=bt.io-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=backtype-tweetcount
2. It is not a standard yet
3. no one codec is agreed upon for the video tag

Using svg and canvas will spike your cpu and suck your battery just as much or more when compared to flash player 10.1 beta for mobile devices tests. In reality, it depends on what your doing and if you have hardware acceleration (mind you apple’s built in video players have that on both it’s OS’s-they just opened the api for a few gpu’s in the desktop OS and Adobe has a beta out with the added ability)

1. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_html5_really_beat_flash_surprising_results_of_new_tests.php
2. http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/05/10/top-flash-misperceptions-flash-is-a-cpu-hog/
3. http://vimeo.com/10553088
4. (some will say these people are invested in Adobe’s success, I would ask “and Steve is not invested in Apple’s”)

JS is lacking the ease of built in high powered classes that Flash offers. (Unity/Corona/Revolution is wait and see if they let them through. If they do then it will be obvious that Flash was singled out.)

1. The byte array, sound, local p2p abilities, 3d support, flex framework, strict typing in the flash player blows JS away in what you can build for a reasonable cost.
2. better visual IDE’s that many devs/creatives use for this type of content. Some cost money, some are free.
3. The flash player executes code the same, browsers have all kinds of differences you have to if/else for-more costs.
4. http://blogs.forrester.com/ronald_rogowski/10-05-10-what_should_customer_experience_professionals_do_about_html5

So when it comes to heavy multimedia/experience sites, ie:

1. http://www.audiotool.com/
2. http://aviary.com/
3. http://www.sliderocket.com/index_c.html
4. http://ironmanmovie.marvel.com/ (click “enter site”)

(not your run of the mill blog/company/news site)

what Apple has done is:

1. Remove the number one heavy multimedia path used on the Internet today from their devices.
2. State that it performs badly (not surprising when  you don’t offer direct gpu access)
3. State that it isn’t “open” even though most of the spec, other than the 3rd party codecs like h.264, is and available: http://ted.onflash.org/2010/02/flash-open-interactive-medium.php
4. Offer  a not ready for primetime solution chain- html5/svg/js/canvas
5. Then say if that can’t cut it build a iPhone native app (not open at all)
6. Example: Just see Steve’s letter about flash when he talks about games-his answer: closed native app games approved by apple for the iTunes store. If you want open source games a native app is not the answer.
7. Example2: With Iron man site Apple forces them to invest a bunch of time and money to build an app in objC and submit an app to the store for approval to reach iDevices. Why should they have to spend the extra money/time if iPhone and iPad “support the full web” already?

Now you went from Flash on many devices/browsers/OSs to a native app on one device that requires the approval process outlined above and it’s own code base. Apple has successfully lashed you, the developer,  to the main mast of the USS Apple. Hope the app gets approved at some point!

If Steve is so sure that flash is dead, he should put the plugin on the iDevices and let the user decide what content they want to see. If they stop going to those sites because of bad performance then the site owner can decide what to do with their content. Let the user and site owner think for themselves.

To developers, Steve is just trying to frame the closed tightly controlled iDevice world as open by saying that you can have the same development experience (features, ease, and time)  with html5/js/svg/canvas as you can with the flash platform tooling. I can tell Steve right now that is not true.  As an e-learning developer who “creates” stuff everyday (which Jobs feels is needed to be able to give him criticism), I think Steve Jobs is flat out lying when he talks about being open and protecting users. He wants to control them and the developers.

• Their is garbage on there built in objective c
• Many of the most popular games use cross compiling tech
• Using the 3 languages does not mean that new api’s won’t be too much work to add to a given app

I suppose Apple could demand that apps add the API’s or block an app’s next upgrade release after the API’s have been released.

This all goes, in my opinion, back to the control Apple is flexing just raising the cost of development on the platform. Maybe EA Sports can take the chance something will be denied but say your an independant/small firm – will you cash out your 401k, kids college fund, or the rainy day fund to learn the languages, hire devs, learn the build tools etc to then wait and see if Apple deams you worthy? I didn’t think so. It’s really the cadillac phone for cadillac developers who have money to gamble in time and resources. As someone who works for smaller companies the risk is too great. You could be denied. If your approved, your in a sea of 180,000 other apps. Since your app must go out via the store you have no ability to host the app image on your site, email it out, etc. Your marketing ability is severly limited. There is no solution for private apps built by enterprises for only their employees.

This leads to quite a high cost of entry which is not what the web has ever been about-code, techniques, frameworks, and platforms have always been pushing to reduce cost of entry. WordPress makes setting up blogs easy, isp’s offer 1 click installs to make the cost of deployment even less. PHP became popular as a free server to counter jsp and asp. Almost all useful JS libraries are free to use. You can use any process to write your code and then generate html/js from that-browsers aren’t allowed to not render it because you used a convrsion tool to spit out html pages. The iPhone eco system is actually raising the cost of entry with each release. Giving you no sense if or when your app will be approved, forcing the html5 angle (which is not a ratified spec and is seriously lacking IDE’s) over Flash for heavy media content, forcing you to learn only their supported languages, blocking cross compilers. So overall I see this as a continuation of the Apple tradition of increasing cost to play in their garden.

Even a tool like Titanium or Adobe Air which support html/js app development won’t be supported since they cross compile that “accepted” language to an app bytecode. So html/js is okay for safari mobile but not when it’s converted.

it’s ironic this is the company that the standard lovers/flash haters hold up as leading the march to the non-plugin web. Yet that same company when it comes to the iPhone OS they are completely focused on abstracting the web via their closed App format. When was the last time you saw an ad for the browser on the iPhone? That’s because they are focusing on apps which they get 30% of. You going to a internet site makes them no money-they’d rather you download a non-free app that presents the same content in an approved form that makes them $. So really your experiencng not the full internet but the Apple sanitized and monetized internet. Which Apple can enforce via it’s lock down of the app store and it’s leverage over developers once they have heavy investment. It’s a platform of prisoners who have to ask is the “pain of leaving less than the pain of staying”. Reminds me of the large LMS providers. Remember when the 1st iPhone came out and Apple was saying that all apps should be through the browser? What happened? Money happened-they realized how much they could make by shackling the iPhone to ATT, apps to the app store, devs to their tooling, and blocking any other tech that may take money away-flash, silverlight, unity, java, etc.

I just re-read Jobs DRM letter:
“The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.”

Steve, imagine a platform where developers can use the tools they like as long as it produces iPhone OS byte code that is valid. Don’t setup rules that increase devs cost of entry-it will only hurt you in the long run. Let consumers decide if they want to buy cross compiled apps or go to flash enabled sites.

More reading:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/apple-takes-aim-at-adobe-or-android.ars

Statement: HTML can play video & Apple is blocking Flash Player on the “i” devices browsers therefore Flash is dead.

Problem: html5/js/and svg missing capabilities and creation tooling increases cost of entry.

When will html5/js/and svg which I see as the closest combo to what flash gives you will have stuff like: bytearray class, sockets, the depth of the sound class, amf data transfer format, pixelbender shaders, variable bit-rate streaming, microphone access, camera access, file i/o, drm? Where is the IDE that will have all the artist/animators/dev-signers willing to switch because it’s “standards based” AND it doesn’t triple the budget for their client? That’s key, the standard-vistas are saying flash is dead but if they think that the flash creatives are about to use notepad (without a timeline) to write all the javascript to animate and add logic to an svg graphic they just output from illustrator – then they will be disappointed. That will force them to un-competitive project bidding. Standards nazis tend to miss the real world of paying bills. You have to have tools that lower the cost of entry for creatives to get them to see your standard as a viable output target to present to their clients.

I can see at some point Flash IDE/ Flash Builder IDE adding x complier output to a html5/canvas/svg/js package that can begin to act like an swf. Adobe already does it with their compilers for AS-iphone app, and their C+ to SWF bytecode. Write once deploy to many. They have an opensource spec called fxg that is a graphic interchange format that DW has been shown to consume and render svg/canvas versions, same with flash. It’s all about the tooling.

demo vid: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/10/sneak_peek_ai_fl_dw_canvas.html

Yet javascript has some issues with depth of ability. Which was reinforced by the ecmascript 4/5 mess. (Notice how the standard ended up tending the current field rather than climbing the mountain in the distance? Thats what you get with a horse designed by committee – it comes out a camel.) It’s missing those powerful classes so that output will probably limit what you can do when targeting html5 output for now. Hopefully, if adobe goes down this road they’ll roll some support js framework classes that can compensate for the missing built in classes that ActionScript3 has.

If that happens then why would any flasher care? They wouldn’t. Build your stuff in Flash IDE’s and let the cross-compiler do it’s thing. Will it be the most svelt code ever seen-no. Will you get the job done on-time and on budget, yes. That’s where the html5 guys miss it. They don’t get how flash tooling and advanced classes reduce *Cost Of Entry* to great experience sites-heavy interaction, ria’s, rich media, video with alpa channels in 3d space, complex simulation using physics, 3d, pixel bender filters and particle frameworks. Adobe Air is another example-Adobe gave flashers the ability to build desktop apps. No need to learn another language-just export to air, done. Low cost of entry.

I still look at the elearning courseware I built for VW/DCX/Toyota 6 years ago and I still do not see how you can build it for a reasonable price in HTML5 now. HTML5 is not ready for experience sites with lots of mixed multimedia built on a budget (missing classes and tools). Cost of entry again. I’d love to see google build what i’ve done purely in HTML5 – then tell me how much it cost time wise. Was it under 60k for an 1.5 hour long technical automotive repair training course delivered in a 8 weeks (both web and cd versions) from scratch? In the trenches of paid work it’s the fastest route between point A and B. Currently-Flash.

So will espn switch to html5 for their vids – Probably. Good, pleeeease take over the linear passive tv style playback- “Welcome oompa loompas of interactivity/experience”, meanwhile flash has been making stuff like this: http://aviary.com/tools/myna quickly. Standards like html5 are good at codifying abilities that Flash has shown to be valuable several years earlier.

So my personal view is – whatever. HTML5 video playback != Flash Player abilities yet. HTML5 tooling for creatives are sorely behind flash dev tools.

some balanced reads:

http://www.dgrigg.com/post.cfm/01/31/2010/Apple-Flash-the-iPad-and-premature-speculation

http://www.chuckstar.com/blog/?p=657

http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/02/open_access_to_content_and_app.html

Great post by Arron. I wonder if the simple fact of trying to identify and “use” motivators of your students is in of itself  ”manipulation.”  Students will always be aware that the company wants them to be involved in the training and thusly are getting something out of it (more efficiency, more $$$, certification, less chance of lawsuits, etc.)

Personally I’ve never understood why people need to be “motivated” to learn, but I was raised by a teacher so maybe that’s my own form of motivation…

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts in OS X.

I’ve been batting around what smartphone to get. Love the iPhone but don’t love AT&T, can get a free droid eris upgrade now but don’t love the verizon pricing, Like sprint’s costs but don’t like that i have to pay for a pre (and i like the pre interface), then there is blackberry on all the networks but their browser is crap.

I’m looking for something to test elearning on as well so that factors in. One thing i think the industry needs to deal with is if we push our training(video, audio, flash animations , game simulations) on to these devices users who pay for data by the meg will be getting hit with a bill (Many have unlimited plans but I know several people on Verizon who can not afford that cost). Something we have to think about: possibly posting at the beginning how much data the course has? Possibly building native apps installed over company wifi rather than mobile web browser options is the way to go to avoid the big hit over the cell network.

At the least we should discuss the issue with clients before they deploy for their customers.