While the blame game can be entertaining and instructive, it’s seldom productive. 64-bit support would be nice, of course, but not compelling enough, for me, to upgrade. Adobe better bring more paint than that…

Daring Fireball: The $64,000 Question

A few various observations and comments regarding Adobe’s announcement that Photoshop CS4 will be available in a 64-bit version for Windows, but will only be 32-bit for Mac OS X.

Text and pictures (via the IMG container) are open web protocols (though I ’spose you could argue GIF was a Compuserve proprietary format).

Flash doesn’t bring video to the web, it brings Flash to the web. We need an HTML container (VID?) that delivers SWF, MOV, and (what’s Silverlight’s extension), etc. as easily and transparently (to the developer and end user) as IMG brings JPG, GIF, and PNG.

If it’s just like text and pics, it should be treated just like text and pics, a simple file in a simple container.

Microsoft Licenses Flash Lite for Windows Mobile - WMExperts

Microsoft has licensed Adobe Flash Lite, the Flash Player runtime for mobile devices, so that Windows Mobile phone users can view Flash content in the browser. Microsoft has also licensed the Adobe Reader LE software, so that Windows Mobile users will be able to view PDFs.

Latest article for Phone Different. This one covers the security and privacy concerns of Adobe’s Flash, and why it may be better to keep it off the iPhone. Let me know what you think.

Flash on iPhone: OMG Vidz or Privacy Nightmare? - Phone different

Adobe’s ubiquitous interactive, multi-media technology powers everything from online office apps to easily embedded video clips to in-our-face banner adds. It also powers it’s own “cookie” online state-saving and tracking system. Didn’t know that? Advertisers do. They already exploit Flash cookies on the desktop. And as much as we want our videos clips on the iPhone, they want their cookies more. After all, the iPhone is the “next generation mobile” devices — the one that know everything about us, including who we are and where we are, with all of our private contacts and secure contents just there for the tracking, aggregating, and selling.

There are several possible reasons for the lack of Flash:

1. Flash is a memory and CPU hog on Mac OS X, and Adobe has apparently never seen a need to optimize a Mac version. Memory and CPU hog on iPhone OS X would not be good.
2. Flash is a proprietary format owned by Adobe. As iPhone MobileSafari supports open web standards, rather than proprietary ones, why would it be included? (If Microsoft’s Silverlight was market leader, would Apple support it? What about Active X, lots of corporate sites are curses with that. What about IE 5/6, many sites are “locked” on those bungled code bases?)
3. While Apple’s neglect of QuickTime is almost criminal, Flash is technically a competitor to QuickTime, and as such, while iPhone supports QuickTime and H.264, Apple could be using it (the most popular mobile browsing platform) as a way to boost their own internet video standard, rather than Adobe’s (and again, if Microsoft’s WMP, WMA, and WMV were market leaders, would Apple support them?)

Personally, a a web developer who uses Flash, I’m also just as happy not having it on the iPhone. The more open standards promoted, the better. If Nike’s site doesn’t properly render without Flash, that’s a disgrace, and they should fix it ASAP. Sometimes technologies like Flash excite people so much they use it because they can, not because the should (or even need to).

Apple’s website and store, Amazon’s website and store, and many others work just fine using standard’s based HTML and AJAX.

Adobe employees say they know nothing of Flash on iPhone

iPhone users and to-be users have long complained about the devices lack of Flash support in its otherwise very capable browser. When rumors circulated earlier this month about the possibility that Flash was imminent on mobile Safari, everyone perked up yes, even the skeptics. GearLive claimed that a source had conveyed the details about Flash on iPhone, saying that it was “just around the corner.” Well if thats the case, then most of Adobe doesnt know about it.

Lately I’ve been experiencing frequent timeouts while uploading files via FTP using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. Turns out the default timeout (Dreamweaver - Settings - Site) is 2 seconds, which sometimes isn’t enough for the real world. I’ve changed this to 300 seconds for now, and it’s working much better.