Adobe Flash Finally On It's Way to iPhone?
Surely it can't be true? Well, fasten your seat belts because this time ladies and gentlemen - it is. Adobe has today announced via its annual Adobe MAX keynote that its popular multimedia creation software, Adobe Flash will finally be making it's way to iPhone. It's not Flash Player, but it is Flash. Flash Magazine reports that according to Serge Jespers an evangelist at Adobe, we can expect a beta very soon.
"A public beta version of Flash CS5 Professional with this new capability is planned for later this year. This new capability in Flash CS5 Professional allows developers to use their preferred Flash Platform tools and technologies to develop content for a device that was previously closed to them."
In fact, you're probably not going to believe this but the first 'Flash-based' applications are actually already on the App Store. Yes, really. Adobe says it put them up in secrecy to avoid a leak of the announcement before the keynote.
The full list of applications which use the new platform are as follows:
- Just Letters
- Finger Paint
- Red Hood
- Chroma Circuit
- FickleBlox
- That Roach Game
- Trading Stuff
- South Park Avatar Creator
So, What does this mean for the market? Well, for one, once Adobe release this beta of CS5 in this quarter, you'll likely see a huge explosion in flash development companies announcing that they're going to start targeting their content for iPhone. We'll also be likely to see long-standing and existing flash developers porting their well loved flash classics.
When asked if Flash Player would ever come to the iPhone, they also had this to say:
"Flash Player uses a just-in-time compiler and virtual machine within a browser plug-in to play back content on websites. Those technologies are not allowed on the iPhone at this time, so a Flash Player for iPhone is not being made available today."
But moving into the future, what does this mean for us? As consumers we're likely to see the level (and quality) of particularly our gaming experiences become more enhanced, polished, and feature-full, with Flash bringing with it smooth animation and fluency of motion.
The only question I can see myself asking at that point is; Will our iPhone batteries actually be able to cope with this new genre of App Store swooshy'ness?