Even though it has its flaws there’s no denying that Apple has done a great job with the iPad. A while back I got to play with one for a few days to prepare for a demo. Next to its obvious and well documented/talked about flaws I also think it is too heavy and too big and so I was on the lookout for a smaller and lighter alternative. Obviously everyone in the tech industry took notice of what Apple had created and we’re finally starting to see the details of some of the iPad’s future competitors.
I’ve been following the news about the Galaxy Tab from Samsung for a while now. Today they started an official teaser campaign. See the video below.
Now… I’m just wondering… Am I the only one that watched this video frame by frame? Am I the only that tried to decipher the blurry text in the background? (The blurriest one says “Flash support” by the way. After all Samsung is one of our Open Screen Project partners.)
This looks like it’s a great form factor. A 7-inch screen sounds just right to me and the widescreen aspect ratio makes a lot more sense especially if you want to watch video on it. I can’t wait to get my hands on one! The second half of this year is going to be very interesting… and expensive ;-)
One of the many exciting new features in AIR 2 is the ability to create native installers. That gives your AIR 2 application the ability to talk to native code. In this video I’ll show you how to build native installers for Adobe AIR 2 using the command line, and I also explore how my Package Assistant app simplifies that process. The Package Assistant that I’m using in the video is an older version and I think you’ll find that the current version is even easier to use.
Multi-touch is only just gaining grounds in the tech world. While it’s pretty common on mobile devices these days, you don’t yet see a lot of multi-touch devices in people’s homes. Sure… A lot of trackpads on laptops also support multi-touch these days but they usually only support the common gestures for zoom and rotate.
One of the key advantages of the Flash Platform is that Adobe can innovate and add new features rapidly. As Flash Player is one of the fastest adopted technologies on the web developers can use those new features in their applications almost instantly. Multi-touch is a very good example. When Adobe saw the uprise of multi-touch technology, it immediately started working on adding multi-touch capabilities to both Flash Player 10.1 and the AIR 2 runtimes. With public betas being available to developers, they can immediately start to experiment with these new features and start adding them to their applications.
That said… Developers have been doing multi-touch applications with Flash for years thanks to community driven ActionScript libraries. Check out these videos to get an idea on what people are doing/have been doing with multi-touch and Flash. (more…)
The states model has changed quite a bit in the Flex 4 framework but it’s a lot easier to use. In this video I show you just how easy it is to add different states and to add different behaviors and change properties based on the current state.
I already blogged about how excited I was about HP’s slate device a few weeks ago. These two new videos make me want it even more!
The first one is a teaser ad from HP but make sure you watch the second video! Adobe’s Alan Tam shows the device in action! No CGI tricks here! Alan shows Adobe AIR and Flash in action on the device: Video playback from MTV.com; A Spongebob Squarepants game (most casual games on the Web run in Flash); photo editing at Photoshop.com and reading the digital version of the New York Times. Now that is the web experience I want on a slate device! I’m ordering this the minute it becomes available!
It’s great to see all the excitement about Flash Player 10.1 coming to mobile devices! Though some people need to learn to get their facts straight before jumping to conclusions.
One of the biggest improvements in Flash Player 10.1 is the memory and CPU consumption which obviously also has a big impact on the battery life. Battery life on mobile devices is very important and thus always top of mind for the engineering team!
There was a lot of commotion around the video that my colleague Michael Chaize published. He showcased a number of Flash based apps to show off the performance of FP10.1. Some of the applications he showed are CPU intensive and thus also potential battery drainers.
Mark Doherty posted a great follow up post with some background information on how we test battery consumption and performance internally. He also recorded a 17 minute YouTube video which resulted in a 6% battery drain. That results to being able to watch over 4 hours worth of YouTube video over WiFi using Flash Player. I can’t even do that on my brand new MacBook Pro (which is supposed to be able to give me 8 hours of battery life)… I’m not even sure I can do that on my Apple phone using their native YouTube app…
Today, Michael posted a follow up video where he plays a 26 minute video and plays a Flash based game for 12 minutes.
He noted a 10% battery drain after the playing the video which calculates down to 4.3 hours of video. Playing the Flash based game for 12 minutes resulted in a 4% drain which boils down to 5 hours of continuous gaming in the browser using Flash Player 10.1.
Those numbers are pretty impressive to me! Especially when you consider that this is still a pre-release version of the Flash Player running on a pre-release version of Android.
Even though you (usually) don’t see it, Photoshop is used just about everywhere you look. From the billboards you see in the streets to the magazines you read and the movies you watch. Worldwide about 10 million creative minds like photographers, graphic designers, architects, advertisers and publishers use Photoshop every day. Even doctors and 3D artists use Photoshop these days.
Recently the founders of Adobe Photoshop – John Knoll, Thomas Knoll, Russell Brown, and Steve Guttman – came back together to tell the story of how an amazing coincidence of circumstances, that came together at just the right time 20 years ago, spawned a cultural paradigm shift unparalleled in our lifetime.
There are a number of exciting activities going on around the world to celebrate this occasion and here are 3 things for you to do to join the celebration online:
Earlier this week (can you believe I really have no idea what day it is today? :)) I joined Adobe’s David Wadhwani and RIM’s Chris Smith on stage at the BlackBerry Developer Day Keynote. Afterwards I asked a couple of BlackBerry community members and application developers about how they feel about the Flash Platform coming to BlackBerry devices. The video is now available on Adobe TV.
Google is selling 60.000 Android devices every day. According to MobileCrunch, that works out to about 5.4 million handsets per quarter, or 21.9 million per year. And the rate is growing rapidly, according to Eric Schmidt who kicked off the Mobile World Live Keynote initiative yesterday.
Android is also not just about handsets anymore. I’ve seen a bunch of tablets running Android as well. The Android OS is free and open source and most of all… you’re in complete control of what you install on it and how you use the web on the device. Very soon you’ll be able to grab Flash Player 10.1 and AIR from the Android Market and install it on your Android device to not only get a full web experience in the device’s browser but also get the power of AIR for standalone applications.
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt talked about why this is important in his Mobile World Live Keynote while Eric Tseng (Senior Product Manager for Android) demoed Flash Player 10.1 on a Nexus One. He actually summed it up very nicely by saying: “The line is blurring between mobile phones and desktop computing… One of our main goals when we embarked on smartphones at Google was to really mirror the desktop web browsing experience – but for many of you and you know who you are – there’s been a critical component missing – Flash!“. But you don’t have to take my word for it… You can watch it here yourself!
I was telling a few colleagues earlier that I wish I could take a few weeks off and just build Flash/AIR apps for Android. Because now I can use the skills that I already know to create apps for these devices… Android really is the first mobile OS that can really compete with Apple’s mobile OS and the fact that it is going to have Flash Player and AIR very soon is just the cherry on top! Flash on!
It’s great to see all the excitement about Flash Player 10.1 coming to mobile devices! Though some people need to learn to get their facts straight before jumping to conclusions.
