2011 is going to be an interesting year! Apple has undoubtedly done an excellent job with the iPad but it has it’s obvious flaws. While they are currently the market leader in tablets the game is changing rapidly. With CES just a few weeks away big brands are starting to tease some of their announcements. (Man… I wish I could be at CES this year! So much cool stuff coming!) Motorola created this interesting teaser that doesn’t really say anything and yet says so much…

BTW… I’m doing a little bit of research on tablets and tablet applications. If you have a few minutes I would really appreciate it if you took the time to fill out this short survey.

It’s always nice to wake up to great news!

Apple’s announcement today that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool. This feature was created to enable Flash developers to quickly and easily deliver applications for iOS devices. The feature is available for developers to use today in Flash Professional CS5, and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases.

This is great news for developers and we’re hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store. We do want to point out that Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.

Adobe will continue to work to bring full web browsing with Flash Player 10.1 as well as standalone applications on AIR to a broad range of devices, working with key industry partners including Google, HTC, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Palm/HP, RIM, Samsung and others.

From http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/09/great-news-for-developers.html

Yesterday I saw a Tweet from Ralph Hauwert who was wondering if Apple’s Magic Trackpad would work with AIR 2.0. You probably already know that AIR 2.0 supports multitouch and gestures. The trackpad on a recent MacBook Pro supports gestures and these work nicely in AIR 2.0. So… My hunch was that the “Magic” Trackpad… I’m sorry… I just have to put that in quotes. With all these magic products I’m starting to wonder why Steve doesn’t have a show in Vegas yet ;-))) But back to my hunch… My hunch was that the “Magic” Trackpad would also just work.

Earlier today I happened to be walking past the Apple Store in Ginza, Tokyo and I went in and bought one. When I got back to the hotel I updated the trackpad drivers through Apple’s Software Update and paired the trackpad with my MBP. I already had DestroyTwitter running and tried the three-finger swipe on it. Oh… In case you didn’t know… the latest version of DestroyTwitter has support for the swipe-gesture to switch between different canvases. The “Magic” Trackpad worked perfectly with DestroyTwitter. I also tried some of my demo applications and they all worked as expected.

Now that I’ve used it for a while I think I like the “Magic” Trackpad. Especially in “lean-back-mode”. I can definitely see this replacing my mouse on my Mac Mini back home. I have it connected to my TV and use it to watch video content from the web.

So… To summarize: The “Magic” Trackpad does work with AIR 2.0. (Note: Like the trackpad on a MacBook, the “Magic” Trackpad only supports gestures. So no raw multi-touch points).

Now go build some cool touch-enabled apps (and send ‘em to me when you’re done)! Flash on!

How’s that for a controversial title? But… It’s true… Hear me out!

First of all let me say that I have absolutely nothing against HTML5! Innovation and competition is always good and keeps everyone on their toes. UPDATE: I also want to emphasize that this is not a fight. HTML5 and Flash can live together just fine and can even complement each other!

One of the first blog posts I read this morning was one on AppleInsider. An Apple spokeswoman claimed that Adobe’s Mike Chambers got it all backwards when he blogged about Apple’s closed system. That’s not the part that made me cringe though. She said that “it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary“.

Ok… So… Let’s analyze that a little bit… Let’s begin with the biggest claim here: H.264. Last time I checked, H.264 was far from open. It is owned by a private organization known as MPEG LA who said earlier this year that “Internet Video that is free to end users would continue to be exempt from royalty fees until at least December 31, 2015“. Nobody knows what is going to happen after 2015. The patents awarded to MPEG LA don’t expire until 2028. So… to make this clear… H.264 is not open.

So what about HTML5, CSS and JavaScript… Those are open, right? Well yeah. The specs are open meaning that everyone can download those specs and build an application around it to display that language. Hey… Wait a minute… That sounds a lot like Flash! The specs for FLV (Flash video), SWF (the file format for Flash Player), AMF (the binary format for exchanging data) and RTMP (the protocol used for transmission of audio, video, and data) are all published and can be downloaded by anyone.

The specs for HTML5 are decided by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG). The WHATWG was founded by individuals of Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software in 2004, after a W3C workshop. Apple, Mozilla and Opera were becoming increasingly concerned about the W3C’s direction with XHTML, lack of interest in HTML and apparent disregard for the needs of real-world authors. Anyone can participate as a Contributor by joining the WHATWG mailing list. The same goes for Flash. Our bugbase is open to anyone and anyone can view bugs and add feature requests.

But the Flash runtime is closed! Ok… Sure… Flash Player is not open source although some parts are. That said… Ask yourself this: Is your browser open source? The only browser that is completely open source is Firefox. Safari is only partly open source (only the WebKit engine). The same can be said about Chrome (in the Chromium project). However, the biggest HTML runtime out there –Internet Explorer (still used by over 50% of all internet users)– is as closed as Flash Player. And so is Opera (even though they are part of the WHATWG).

And with that, I come back to the title of this post: Flash is as open as HTML5 = HTML5 is as open as Flash.

UPDATE: You should also read “HTML5 canvas proprietary Apple technology?” by Leo Bergman and “I’d rather be a Woz” by nothingGrinder. Hat tip to Philippe and Aaron who posted this in the comments.

Note: I’m sure many of you will have some comments on this topic and I have no problem with your comments as long as you keep them constructive and on topic.

Note 2: For those who saw a drop in the comment count: I just disabled and deleted Topsy trackbacks. These are not comments but automatic pingbacks from RTs on Twitter.

(Image credit: Justin Marty)

Steve Jobs (via TechCrunch): Intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

That’s the first thing I read this morning… I agree with Greg Slepak (CEO of TaoEffect) who wrote:

Crappy developers will make crappy apps regardless of how many layers there are.

That doesn’t mean that all developers using a specific layer will build crappy apps.

Chroma Circuit by Bowlerhat Games is a very good example. Chroma Circuit started out as a Flash based web game. It was one of the first apps that got packaged as an iPhone app using the Packager for iPhone. Apple didn’t seem to mind playing Chroma Circuit on their iDevices as they featured it as a staff pick on iTunes a while ago.

Fickleblox by BlueSkyNorth is another good example. This application started out as a Flash Lite game and is thereby available on a broad range of devices. It was also packaged using the Packager for iPhone and thus available in the app store.

Both applications (and there are dozens like this in the app store today) are fun to play, easy to use and perform well on the iDevice. You can hardly call that sub-standard! You can also hardly say that they hinder the progress of the platform. In fact… I think it is Apple who is now effectively hindering the progress of the iDevice platform. By allowing “intermediate layers” like Flash but also Unity, Titanium, MonoTouch, Corona, … the platform has become more open and appealing to non Obj-C/C/C++ developers. More developers (regardless of which technology they use) on the platform = more applications in the appstore. I wonder how many apps in the appstore today were built using one of these intermediate layers…

I’m with Adobe and all other intermediate layer providers, for that matter!