While Facebook is slowly working out the kinks to bring more games to mobile, there’s a small company in Menlo Park, Calif., that has beat them to it.

ISwifter is announcing a new iPad app today called theWorx for Facebook, which gives users the full Facebook experience — social games and all.

That means users can check their crops, maintain their cities and feed their fish without having to boot up their computer.

A small company of 20 employees, iSwifter is almost entirely bootstrapped, having generated $10 million in revenue last year.

As my colleague Ina Fried wrote, the previous iPad app allowed users to access any Flash-based content on the Web by running a browsing session on its servers and streaming the results to the iPad. What iSwifter quickly realized was that “one of the major use cases is Facebook games,” said the company’s co-founder Rohan Relan.

TheWorx will work similarly to the old app, except that it is tailored specifically for Facebook. ISwifter will host the content on its servers and then stream the games to the user on the iPad, with little latency. By taking this approach, users will have access to all games on Facebook without developers having to lift a finger.

Additionally, all of the original ways to monetize the applications will be in place, including advertising and Facebook Credits. TheWorx will be free for a short trial period, and then users will pay for additional access. The app will come out later this month or in early June. At that time, Relan said, the company will figure out how much it will charge. The iSwifter app currently costs $5.

“Our plan is if we do everything that the Facebook app does, then we can charge for that functionality,” Relan said.

The biggest threat to iSwifter is if Facebook starts bringing more content to mobile. “That would be pretty devastating to us,” Relan admits. However, he said there’s not an easy way for all developers to bring their content to mobile. Currently, some of the largest game developers, like Zynga, have created content specifically for Facebook’s app, but it has been a slow process.

“Some of the big apps have made native versions, but it will take time for the Long Tail to migrate over,” he said.

Here’s how the app works:

In one of the odder things to happen in my journalism career, I was forwarded a flash analyst report by Wall Street’s Macquarie Capital on the news that AllThingsD.com broke yesterday (and foreshadowed before) about the shakeup of Yahoo’s board.

I cover the Silicon Valley Internet giant closely, obviously, and have had a lot of scoops on its machinations over the years. This was simply the latest, and turned out to be on on target (Phew!).

While that is presumably my job as a reporter, it was apparently of “concern” to Macquarie’s analyst.

Said the report:

One final note: it continues to concern us that one particular journalist, Kara Swisher, frequently seems to be privy to such precise information regarding YHOO. On January 9, almost a month prior to the actual release from the company, Kara wrote, “While some departures seem most obvious — longtime board members Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson — the really interesting part will be the possible exit of Chairman Roy Bostock.” Yesterday she wrote, “expect a change in the Yahoo board composition, too, as early as this week.” And today at 3:38pm EST, she posted a story that “Yahoo will announce the impending departure of four of its longtime board members, including chairman Roy Bostock. The others headed out the door are Hewlett-Packard exec Vyomesh Joshi, Gary Wilson and Arthur Kern.” While we give much credit to Kara for her ability to obtain this information, we believe it reflects very poorly on YHOO’s ability to maneuver effectively outside the public spotlight.

While I appreciate the fist-bump, it’s unclear why it’s concerning for shareholders — whom these reports are created for — to know this information before Yahoo deigned to release the news or spoonfeeds any other information at investor events. After all, fair, complete and accurate information from anywhere in the tech news media could help them make better investment decisions.

And Yahoo also always operates in the public spotlight, even when it is outside it, as does every tech company. That’s especially true these days, in the vastly changed media environment, in which news moves faster and with more immediate impact.

In fact, I’m concerned that worrywart Wall Street doesn’t grok this — but I’m definitely not surprised, either.

The Flip Camera
San Jose, Calif. — The Cisco Flip, a beloved handheld video recorder, was killed on April 12, 2011. Its untimely death was a result of the realignment of Cisco’s consumer electronics business.

Born in May 2006 as the Pure Digital Point & Shoot, the pocket camera went through many evolutions in its lifetime, later becoming the Flip Ultra and spawning the Flip Mino and Flip MinoHD. It found a new home in 2009, when it was acquired by Cisco for $590 million. The Flip was known as the life of the party at birthday and wedding celebrations, and will be remembered for its simplistic design and pop-out USB arm. “People literally flipped for the Flip when it first came out,” a friend of its parents, Pure Digital, said. It is survived by a number of boiled-down point-and-shoots and countless smartphone cameras, as well as video-sharing apps with annoyingly cute names like “Viddy.”

Its distant cousin, the Kodak Zi8, also went missing from the Kodak store earlier this year.

Guitar Hero
Santa Monica, Calif. — For Guitar Hero, Feb. 9, 2011, was the day the music died. The videogame franchise was killed when Activision announced during its fourth-quarter earnings call that it was shuttering the business unit dedicated to Guitar Hero.

The popular game was born in 2005 to Red Octane and Harmonix, and was distributed by Activision. Later iterations of Guitar Hero, which were developed by Neversoft, had band-specific titles and also incorporated more instrumental props, so fans could play drums or sing as well as play guitar.

But Guitar Hero sales fell off, and the game was eventually overshadowed by its record-breaking Activision siblings, the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft series. Revenues of Guitar Hero fell from $1.7 billion in 2008 to about $300 million in 2010.

Guitar Hero will be remembered for its love of music, with Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen among its favorite artists, and for creating living-room rock arenas for millions of users.

Guitar Hero is survived by Rock Band, Rocksmith, Rock Revolution and likely many other console and mobile games starting with “Rock” that we’re not aware of or haven’t been invented yet.

HP TouchPad
Palo Alto, Calif. — That flame which doth burn brightest often burns out quickly, or something like that.

The HP TouchPad was effectively killed on Aug. 18, 2011, at the young age of just 49 (that’s days). Prior to its demise, the TouchPad was praised for its bright 9.7-inch display, Beats audio and mostly for the fact that it ran HP’s intuitive webOS mobile operating system, though the tablet ultimately saw disappointing sales during its short life.

Hewlett-Packard, its maker, said webOS devices had not gained enough traction in the marketplace with consumers, and couldn’t justify continuing to produce hardware like the TouchPad around it.

HP’s new CEO, Meg Whitman, said later on, “I think we’ve got to walk before we run here.” The TouchPad is survived by a newly open source webOS system and a cult of rabid fans, as evidenced by its post-mortem fire sales. It joins the Microsoft Kin phone in a special Afterlife for Tech Products Less Than 50 Days Old, while its operating system remains in a state of purgatory.

Dell Streak Tablets and Mini 10 Netbook
Round Rock, Texas — The streak was not a long one.

Dell’s Streak 5 tablet, which was originally demoed at D8 in 2010, disappeared from store shelves in mid-August of this year. Dell hardly had time to recover from the loss before its sibling, the Dell Streak 7, was also discontinued.

Shortly after the loss of the Streak tablet, tragedy again struck the Dell family, when Dell confirmed it would no longer make consumer netbooks, feeling the pressure of tablets as well as an emerging shift toward thin, light “ultrabooks” in the laptop category. The Dell Mini 10 was known for being small, as netbooks are, and for being that laptop you knew you could always fit on the seatback tray on an airplane.

Apple MobileMe
Cupertino, Calif. — June 6, 2011, was Steve Jobs’s last appearance at an Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. It was also the day MobileMe effectively went away, with Jobs saying the $99 dollar service wasn’t Apple’s “finest hour.”

MobileMe launched at WWDC in July of 2008, and was meant to sync calendars, emails, bookmarks and photo galleries. For individual accounts, it came with 20 gigabytes of online storage and 200GB of monthly data transfer.

While great in theory, our friend MobileMe was not without flaws. In fact, AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg said, in his review of the service, that MobileMe was “far too flawed to be reliable.”

Apple’s Internet-based sync services since 2000 have evolved, but have never truly gone away: Like an actual ghost, we know they’re there, and we see glimpses of how they work, but they still elude many people. MobileMe, in its earliest form, was iTools, and later on, the subscription service .Mac. Even now, we’re not entirely sure whether MobileMe was killed or simply reincarnated as something new — in this case, iCloud.

Adobe Flash on Mobile
San Jose, Calif. — This is the way mobile Flash ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

On Nov. 9, Adobe said it would no longer be developing Flash, its platform for interactive and rich media content, for mobile devices.

Macromedia Flash was born in 1997, the spawn of FutureWave’s FutureSplash Animator. Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005, thus becoming Adobe Flash.
As smartphone and tablet wars heated up in recent years, Flash support became one of the features that iPad competitors — mainly Google Android devices — touted to set themselves apart from Apple’s mobile products.

The tech world has contemplated what this could all mean for the future of Flash. As AllThingsD’s Ina Fried wrote, Flash’s death on mobile was seen as a vindication for the late Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products. Could Jobs once again have seen the future? Flash is not a completely dead standard yet, but with developers increasingly adopting HTML5 as the new standard for Web language, it’s unclear what exactly will become of Flash.

Google Buzz
Mountain View, Calif. — A standard housecleaning session turned fatal this past October when Google pulled the plug on its social networking effort. Google Buzz, the predecessor to Google+, aimed to create a social network through Gmail.

Social and gregarious by nature, Google Buzz was born in February of 2010. Its early life was filled with strife, as users struggled to grasp the real-time social interactions that were occurring within email chains, and real privacy concerns emerged.

Despite its short life span, the memory of Google Buzz surely remains, as the search giant eventually had to settle with the FTC over privacy violations and is now committed to 20 years of privacy audits.

Memories, indeed.

Google Buzz is survived by Google+, and follows Friendster and Myspace to the social graveyard, although technically those still exist.

Readers, what do you think was the greatest tech product loss in 2011?

Apple already uses Anobit’s technology in the iPhone, iPad and the MacBook Air, so the company’s interest here is clear: Own and control the technologies critical to those products, particularly if they further differentiate them from the competition.

The acquisition, if it closes, would be Apple’s first in Israel and, potentially, its largest ever, surpassing its $404 million purchase of NeXT in 1997.

Reached for comment, Apple declined, citing its policy of ignoring rumors and speculation.

In a statement to AllThingsD, the company said that an update — the last major refresh planned for the Flash plug-in — is on its way, and should be out this year.

“Yes, Adobe will release one more version of the Flash Player for mobile browsing, which will provide support for Android 4.0, and one more release of the Flash Linux Porting Kit — both expected to be released before the end of this year,” Adobe said. “After that time, Adobe will continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates.”

In the meantime, though, that means the Galaxy Nexus can’t run Flash content.

“As we previously communicated in a blog post, devices and software updates from our partners which introduce new technologies are being developed on varied schedules that are different from our own, which means that the Adobe runtimes may not always be optimized or supported on devices until a subsequent release,” Adobe senior director Greg DeMichillie said in a statement. “We will provide a minor update to the runtimes to support the Galaxy Nexus in December.”

Adobe had said it planned to release one more update for the Flash Player earlier this month, when it announced that it was halting development on the project in favor of working with HTML5 and helping mobile developers create native apps using Adobe AIR.

The software company is announcing this week the arrival of Photoshop Touch, an Android tablet version of its flagship Photoshop product. It’s not the full Photoshop, but does include a wide range of editing tools more typically found on desktop programs.

The company first hinted it was heading in this direction back in March, with a demonstration at Photoshop World in Orlando.

Adobe is actually introducing six apps for Android tablets this week, each selling for about $10, but if you aren’t a creative professional, the others likely won’t interest you. They have to do with things such as picking colors, creating client presentations and doing a quick sketch.

The move is also a modest win for Google and the tablet makers, which have struggled to get apps that are specifically designed for tablets.

Only one of the apps — the sketching program called Ideas — is available for Apple devices. Adobe does plan to bring all of the other apps to Apple’s iOS, but didn’t have any details, other than to expect an announcement in the first quarter of next year.

And that brings up one of the rubs with Adobe’s current mobile strategy. Although the company is clearly toying with different ways to extend creativity from computers to phones and tablets, its strategy is somewhat disjointed.

The company’s earliest mobile efforts included Photoshop Express, a basic photo editing tool that debuted first for the iPhone, and later for the iPad and Android.

Adobe has also offered a couple of products that aim to use a tablet in conjunction with a desktop computer to augment the creative process.

More recently, it introduced Carousel, a subscription service that synchronizes photos across devices. For now, though, Carousel only shares photos across Macs and iOS devices.

The technology allows Internet browsers to display jazzed-up images and effects that react to users’ actions, delivering game-like interactivity without installing additional software. Developers can use HTML5 to get their creations on a variety of smartphones, tablets and PCs without tailoring apps for specific hardware or the online stores that have become gatekeepers to mobile commerce.

That promise—and the lure of Apple Inc. devices in particular—is sweeping aside alternative technologies. In the latest development, Adobe Systems Inc. said Wednesday it will pull back on pushing the rival Flash format opposed by Mr. Jobs for mobile devices.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Adobe’s decision to abandon Flash for mobile devices in favor of HTML5 is big news. But what does it really mean for the software company’s business?

Probably not all that much. For now, at least.

First, from a financial perspective, the issue is not dire. Adobe doesn’t break out Flash in its earnings reports. But according to a 2010 estimate by Robert W. Baird & Co., Flash generates less than 10 percent of Adobe’s total revenue. And some believe the percentage is quite a bit lower than that — less than 5 percent.

So, from a financial perspective, Flash was never worth all that much to the company’s bottom line.

That said, Flash’s real value has always been as a sort of gateway drug for Adobe’s other software tools. And now that the company has officially pivoted to Flash successor HTML5 with the launch of its Adobe Edge design tool, Flash will inevitably become worth even less to it.

“I don’t see this act alone as having a significant financial impact on them,” IDC analyst Al Hilwa told AllThingsD. “The key for them is to address HTML5 effectively in their tool lineup. They have started doing that and are, in fact, an early leader in this relatively nascent market.”

Forrester analyst Mike Gualtieri agreed. “Adobe made the right decision in dumping Flash for mobile,” he said. “Adobe is about selling creative and development tools, so jettisoning Flash for mobile will allow them to focus on the tools for mobile development.”

Still, while it is not a huge part of its revenue, Adobe did own Flash, and those that wanted to support it were compelled to use the company’s tools.

Plus: Even though HTML5 may be a bigger pie, as they say, there will be a lot more companies looking to take a bite of it.

The looming question, then, is whether Adobe will be able to maintain its share of the broader development tools business, in a world in which it doesn’t have Flash to support it.

Beyond this, there are a few other business issues to consider, as well. Foremost among them is what it means for Adobe to begin to step away from the platform for which it is arguably best known.

And there’s simply no good way to spin that. Flash is in decline, and Adobe is wise to be moving on, first with its mobile browser offering.

This makes it a big strategic loss for the company. Regardless of what you think of Flash as a technology, it has been an important brand for Adobe, particularly in the consumer arena. Phasing it out entails some loss of visibility for the company.

And, make no mistake, it is phasing Flash out. The company’s abandonment of mobile Flash, and its switch to HTML5, almost certainly heralds a migration away from the desktop version of Flash, as well. Part of Adobe’s sales pitch to developers today was a promise to help developers move off it when the time is right.

“We will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve, so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged,” Adobe said in a statement.

In other words: We’re improving Flash to make it easier for you to stop using it.

Which brings us to the strategic missteps leading up to Adobe’s announcement today, in particular the company’s high-profile public relations battle with Apple.

Scrapping mobile Flash is a humiliating concession to Cupertino, which has been urging the recalcitrant Adobe to do just that for years now.

As the late Steve Jobs famously said in his “Thoughts on Flash” essay, “Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Adobe dismissed that suggestion with a series of embarrassing tough-love, full-page, pro-Flash advertisements in the business sections of a number of major newspapers.

Now, a year and a half later, it’s heeding Jobs’s advice.

What does that say about Adobe’s leadership? What’s been going on over there?

Evidently, a lot of waffling.

But now that it’s over, Adobe says it is ready to “aggressively contribute to HTML5.” Good thing, too. The company is already late to the game, and it’s got a lot of work to do if it hopes to advance the standard for the broader industry.

PREVIOUSLY:

• So Now What Will iPad Rivals Say in Their Commercials?
• Horse Flash: Apple’s Steve Jobs on Adobe Vendetta in 2010 at D8 (Video)
• Adobe Admits It Is Saying Buh-Bye to Flash for Mobile Devices
• Gone in a Flash? Adobe Halting Development on Mobile Version of Its Plug-In
• Adobe Co-Founder: We Never Abandoned Apple, but Apple Is Abandoning Us
• Adobe to Apple: You Wanna Hug It Out? Let’s Hug It Out!
• Good Luck With That Alleged Antitrust Complaint Against Apple, Adobe…
• Adobe CTO: Flash on iPhone Doesn’t Suck and Apple Knows It
• A Possible Apple Antitrust Inquiry? Nothing to See Here…
• Microsoft on Flash: What Steve Said
• Adobe: We’re Done With You Too, Apple
• Apple to Adobe: I Know You Are, but What Am I?
• So Much for Flash on the iPhone
• Adobe: Flash for Mac Is Getting Better–Really!

With its decision to end development of mobile Flash, Adobe is also abandoning its goal of establishing the platform as the common runtime software on connected TVs and set-top boxes.

“Adobe will continue to support existing licensees who are planning on supporting Flash Player for Web browsing on digital home devices and are using the Flash Player Porting Kit to do so,” the company said in a statement given to GigaOm. “However we believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a Web browsing experience, and we will continue to encourage the device and content publishing community down that path.”

We believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a Web browsing experience.

What does that mean for Google TV, “which includes Flash Player 10.1 integrated directly into the Google Chrome browser delivering the full Web to consumers on their television sets”?

Who cares? Know anyone with a Google TV who actually uses it?

Didn’t think so.

So, Adobe — which once hoped to make Flash the de facto multimedia platform on PCs, mobile devices and TVs — no longer sees that as a viable strategy. Its new tack: Push developers to create native apps for connected TVs using the AIR framework.

One such company is iSwifter, which makes a product for the iPad that allows Flash games and video to remotely run on a proxy server and then be sent down to the mobile device. Until now, iSwifter has focused its product in the market on Apple’s iOS, but it has had an Android version nearly ready for months.

“Our target market literally just doubled,” iSwifter founder Rajat Gupta said in an interview on Wednesday. “We had actually predicted this day now for over a year.”

Others, such as Skyfire, have already offered Flash-streaming options for Android, though the appeal will clearly grow as Adobe stops updating Flash for Android and other mobile devices.

Gupta said that iSwifter’s Android product should be in the market by next month, focusing initially on tablets such as the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and more traditional Android tablets, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.

Gupta said that his company had talked to Adobe for some time about the need to move to a solution more like iSwifter’s.

“They have a fundamentally flawed architecture for mobile,” Gupta said. “Steve Jobs pointed it out but they didn’t listen.”

The company already has close to a million downloads of its iPad app, Gupta said, with several hundred thousand people actively using it to play Facebook games and other content that doesn’t otherwise work on the iPad. Gupta said that the company expects revenue in excess of $10 million this year and is profitable. It now has 16 employees, up from five back in May.

Adobe’s move should only accelerate its growth, Gupta said.

“We have been waiting for this time when we can step in and launch it,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/adobes-exit-offers-opportunities-for-those-who-stream-flash-remotely/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/so-now-what-will-ipad-rivals-say-in-their-commercials/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/so-now-what-will-ipad-rivals-say-in-their-commercials/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:01:46 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=142362 There are tons of implications to Adobe dropping future mobile development of the Flash plug-in, but one of the most immediate is for those whose job it is to market and sell Android tablets.

Flash support has been one of the key advantages that aspiring iPad competitors have used to tout their devices.

On the phone side, Android makers can brag about the ability to run on faster networks, larger screen sizes, keyboards and all manner of other differences from Apple’s lone iPhone model.

With tablets, though, Flash compatibility (poor performance notwithstanding) had been a key selling point for those looking to take on the iPad. It was a major component in ads from Toshiba, Research In Motion, Motorola and others looking to grab a piece of the tablet market.

Flash support isn’t immediately going away for devices that already have it, but it clearly has lost its luster as a selling point.

So where does that leave the iPad rivals? Both Android and RIM’s PlayBook still have a weak story when it comes to apps. And, sure, tablets can come in various screen sizes, something Samsung has proven by offering the Galaxy Tab in 7-, 8.9- and 10-inch varieties. But that clearly isn’t enough alone to stand out from the iPad, as evidenced by the fact that Apple’s tablet continues to dominate the category.

A Google representative could not immediately be reached for comment. RIM, for its part, says it has licensed Adobe’s source code and plans to continue supporting Flash on the PlayBook.

“As an Adobe source code licensee, we will continue to work on and release our own implementations. RIM remains committed to delivering an uncompromised Web browsing experience to our customers, including native support for Adobe Flash Player on our BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (similar to a desktop PC browser), as well as HTML5 support on both our BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook browsers,” RIM said in a statement to AllThingsD. “In fact, we are pleased that Adobe will focus more efforts on the opportunities that HTML5 presents for our developers, and shares our commitment to HTML5 as we discussed together at DevCon Americas.”

Those are strong words of support, but if Adobe stops its efforts to develop and optimize Flash for mobile devices, RIM may find it has to do a lot of work to follow through on such a promise.

As for the Android camp, it means getting more apps more quickly — something already top of mind for Google, which has been running a series of developer camps aimed specifically at spurring tablet app development.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/so-now-what-will-ipad-rivals-say-in-their-commercials/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/adobe-admits-its-saying-buh-bye-to-flash-for-mobile-devices/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/adobe-admits-its-saying-buh-bye-to-flash-for-mobile-devices/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:15:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=142353

In a blog post by one of its execs, titled “Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5,” Adobe said what had already been reported: That it would no longer be developing its well-known Flash for mobile devices.

Here’s the key graph:

“Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.”

Last night, reports surfaced that the high-profile software company — whose Flash technology has been a flagship product — was halting development on the mobile version of its browser plug-in.

Now, Adobe will focus its PC Web browser business on tools that allow Flash developers to create mobile apps by packaging their code to run on Adobe’s AIR platform.

The move has big implications for Adobe going forward and also for mobile device makers, such as Google and Research In Motion. But not Apple.

As Ina Fried wrote:

“The move, if true, would be a major blow to Android device makers, who have long touted Flash compatibility as a key competitive advantage over Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

It would also mark a posthumous vindication for former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products.”

Turns out Jobs was prescient, as usual.

Here is the full version of the Adobe blog:

Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5

POSTED BY DANNY WINOKUR, VICE PRESIDENT & GENERAL MANAGER, INTERACTIVE DEVELOPMENT AT ADOBE ON NOVEMBER 9, 2011 5:59 AM IN BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS, CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS, DEVELOPERS, VIDEO

Adobe is all about enabling designers and developers to create the most expressive content possible, regardless of platform or technology. For more than a decade, Flash has enabled the richest content to be created and deployed on the web by reaching beyond what browsers could do. It has repeatedly served as a blueprint for standardizing new technologies in HTML. Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices.

However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.

These changes will allow us to increase investment in HTML5 and innovate with Flash where it can have most impact for the industry, including advanced gaming and premium video. Flash Player 11 for PC browsers just introduced dozens of new features, including hardware accelerated 3D graphics for console-quality gaming and premium HD video with content protection. Flash developers can take advantage of these features, and all that our Flash tooling has to offer, to reach more than a billion PCs through their browsers and to package native apps with AIR that run on hundreds of millions of mobile devices through all the popular app stores, including the iTunes App Store, Android Market, Amazon Appstore for Android and BlackBerry App World.

We are already working on Flash Player 12 and a new round of exciting features which we expect to again advance what is possible for delivering high definition entertainment experiences. We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible, just as we have done with CSS Shaders. And, we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged.

We are super excited about the next generations of HTML5 and Flash. Together they offer developers and content publishers great options for delivering compelling web and application experiences across PCs and devices. There is already amazing work being done that is pushing the newest boundaries, and we can’t wait to see what is still yet to come!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/adobe-admits-its-saying-buh-bye-to-flash-for-mobile-devices/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/horse-flash-apples-steve-jobs-on-adobe-vendetta-in-2010-at-d8-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/horse-flash-apples-steve-jobs-on-adobe-vendetta-in-2010-at-d8-video/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:30:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=142320

At a 2010 onstage interview with Walt Mossberg and me at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference, the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs spent a lot of time — and with considerable passion — talking about his company’s decision to dump Adobe’s popular Flash technology in its iPhone and iPad devices.

While he insisted that he wasn’t out to crush Adobe — instead using the metaphor of “choosing what horses to ride” — Jobs explained that the software technology was buggy, no longer useful, and, therefore, needed to be put out to pasture.

“We try to pick things that are in their springs … sometimes you just have to pick the things that are the right things going forward,” said Jobs plainly. “Flash looks like a technology that had its day and is waning.” According to Jobs, HTML5 was the new colt to back.

As to the implications on Apple’s mobile devices if consumers did not agree with his choice, he noted that “it all works itself out,” adding that a new iPad was then selling every three seconds.

“People seem to be liking iPads,” said Jobs with his patented grin.

It’s an interesting video to watch now — along with this one on Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen talking about the issue a year later at D9 — because of reports that first surfaced last night, that the high-profile software company — whose Flash technology has been a flagship product — was halting development on the mobile version of its browser plug-in.

Adobe confirmed the move this morning, noting it will focus its PC Web browser business and on tools that allow Flash developers to create mobile apps by packaging their code to run on Adobe’s AIR platform.

The move has big implications for Adobe going forward and also for mobile device makers, such as Google and Research In Motion. But not Apple.

As Ina Fried wrote:

“The move, if true, would be a major blow to Android device makers, who have long touted Flash compatibility as a key competitive advantage over Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

It would also mark a posthumous vindication for former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products.”

Adobe now apparently agrees.

Here’s the video clip of Jobs talking trash about Flash:

(And, here’s a video from a year later from D9 of Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen talking about the same topic.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/horse-flash-apples-steve-jobs-on-adobe-vendetta-in-2010-at-d8-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/the-fate-of-flash-on-mobile-devices-heres-the-adobe-ceo-talking-about-it-at-d9/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/the-fate-of-flash-on-mobile-devices-heres-the-adobe-ceo-talking-about-it-at-d9/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:05:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=142154

When Walt Mossberg interviewed Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen in June at the ninth D: All Things Digital conference about the future — or lack thereof — of Flash, and about the software company’s ugly fight with Apple over not supporting the technology on its mobile devices, Narayen declared the battle over.

“It’s an argument that the press likes to continue bringing up,” said Narayen, noting that all was fine with its development for Google Android and Research In Motion mobile offerings.

But now, as Ina Fried writes: “Adobe is apparently ready to throw in the towel when it comes to getting Flash to run on mobile devices.”

As it seems to have turned out, even Adobe now might be agreeing with the late Apple icon Steve Jobs on the issue.

Until we have more clarity on the plans, here’s Narayen on the topic at D9:

(And, to even out the score, here’s a video of Jobs talking about Flash at D8 a year before.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/the-fate-of-flash-on-mobile-devices-heres-the-adobe-ceo-talking-about-it-at-d9/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/more-money-for-mobile-ads-medialets-raises-another-8-4-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/more-money-for-mobile-ads-medialets-raises-another-8-4-million/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:15:40 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=142183 Mobile ads are a smallish business with very big growth projections, which is why investors are happy to pour money into the industry. Today’s example: Mobile ad start-up Medialets has raised another $8.4 million, bringing the New York-based company’s total funding to $18 million over the last couple of years.

An SEC filing indicates that previous backers Foundry Group and DFJ Gotham have reinvested in the company. And CEO Eric Litman says he brought in new investors as well, but he won’t identify them.

He would offer up some basic metrics on his firm’s growth, though: Medialets now has 70 employees, who are working on mobile ad campaigns that average around $150,000 per buy. Most of that comes from “in-app” ads that run on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms, but there is increasing interest in mobile Web advertising as well, Litman says.

Speaking of that: What’s his take on Adobe’s move away from its Flash standard for mobile devices? “I think it’s an awesome opportunity for Adobe to make lots of money getting lots of people to upgrade their tools,” Litman says.

Is he being flip? Nope, he says — he figures that developers who have been building for Flash will simply move to Adobe’s upcoming Edge standard. “When Adobe comes out with new tools, and it’s a reasonable facsimile of what Flash used to do, all those same developers are going to go out and buy it.”

Here’s an example of what Medialets is selling — a Dunkin’ Donuts ad that ran on an EA Scrabble app for the iPhone:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/more-money-for-mobile-ads-medialets-raises-another-8-4-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111108/gone-in-a-flash-adobe-said-halting-development-on-mobile-version-of-its-plug-in/ http://allthingsd.com/20111108/gone-in-a-flash-adobe-said-halting-development-on-mobile-version-of-its-plug-in/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:22:28 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=142116 In a stunning move, Adobe is apparently ready to throw in the towel when it comes to getting Flash to run in mobile browsers.

According to a report Tuesday on ZDNet, the company is halting development on future mobile versions of Flash for Android and Research In Motion’s PlayBook, among other mobile operating systems.

“We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations,” ZDNet quotes Adobe as telling developers. “Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.”

Instead, Adobe will focus on tools that allow Flash developers to create mobile apps by packaging their code to run on Adobe’s AIR platform, according to the report.

Adobe representatives were not immediately available for comment.

The move, if true, would be a major blow to Android device makers, who have long touted Flash compatibility as a key competitive advantage over Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

It would also mark a posthumous vindication for former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products.

Although Adobe managed to get Flash running on Android devices, as well as the PlayBook, the performance was typically slow and inconsistent even on devices that supported it.

The move comes amid a broader restructuring at Adobe, which announced earlier on Tuesday that it was cutting 750 jobs and resorting its priorities.

Adobe didn’t specifically call out this move, though it did say it was increasing its investment in HTML5, and “focusing Flash resources on delivering the most advanced PC web experiences, including gaming and premium video, as well as mobile apps.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111108/gone-in-a-flash-adobe-said-halting-development-on-mobile-version-of-its-plug-in/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111010/exclusive-aviary-launches-ipad-extensions-today-keeps-on-pivoting/ http://allthingsd.com/20111010/exclusive-aviary-launches-ipad-extensions-today-keeps-on-pivoting/#comments Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:00:55 +0000 Drake Martinet http://allthingsd.com/?p=130348

In a continuation of its pivot away from Flash, Aviary, the New York-based multimedia editing start-up, is launching an iPad SDK and several new API extensions today.

If the Aviary name rings a bell, you might be more familiar with the company’s last round of products, which brought Adobe-style media editing programs into the Web browser via — you guessed it — loads of Flash.

Though the SDK products are a huge departure from the company’s direction over the last three years, CEO Avi Muchnick said: “The overall goal has been about democratizing creativity — that hasn’t changed.”

But just about everything else has.

Muchnick said Aviary would no longer be actively adding to their impressive Flash-based editing suite, which includes tools for images, vector graphics and audio, among other things.

Today, rather than hoping you’ll drop an image into their in-browser editor, Aviary makes tools for iOS and Android app developers.

Specifically, Aviary’s kit allows app makers to quickly add image editing features like cropping, red-eye removal and filters into their existing iPhone, Android, and, now, iPad apps.

And as of today’s launch, Aviary’s iPad interface will be available in the Pic Collage iPad app, as well as inside an update to Flickr Studio, a third-party iPad app built on Yahoo’s Flickr API.

The turn-key image editing tools have a look and feel somewhere between Apple’s iOS itself and the old Aviary Flash apps.

But Muchnick is eager to please the new app developer partners Aviary is hoping to win.

“One of my goals was to make this customizable to fit the partner,” he said. “[Partners] can change colors to match their app, or grab just the features they want.”

The new focus on partnerships seems to be moving along well enough.

Aviary claims that mobile and API users edited over a million images last month, and the company has brought on former Microsoft Office’s Paul Murphy to be their VP of business development.

Prior to its new direction, Aviary had raised about $11 million total, most recently from Spark Capital and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Aviary is yet another company abandoning Flash, after Apple and Steve Jobs declared it persona non grata for iOS devices.

The company has cut virtually all of its Flash developers and hired mobile developers to build up its SDK offerings.

Massive organizational and directional shifts are tough on any start-up, but Muchnick says that the new direction is really not that at all.

“Aviary doesn’t need to be a destination anymore,” he said. “We want to power all the photo creativity that happens online, and apps are how that will happen.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111010/exclusive-aviary-launches-ipad-extensions-today-keeps-on-pivoting/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20111005/it%e2%80%99s-all-about-content-why-tablets-help-hard-drives/ http://allthingsd.com/20111005/it%e2%80%99s-all-about-content-why-tablets-help-hard-drives/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:00:53 +0000 Mark Wojtasiak http://allthingsd.com/?p=128167 To paraphrase Mark Twain: “Rumors of the hard drive’s death have been greatly exaggerated — again.” If you follow computer industry news, you’ve likely heard the story: hard drive sales are in jeopardy because hordes of users are replacing PCs that use hard drives for storage with tablets that use flash memory for storage.

But given the widespread adoption of tablets like Apple’s iPad, coupled with everyone under the sun vying for a piece of the tablet market, it’s easy to see that consumption of content will continue to explode. And that’s the point — with that explosion comes the aftershock of storage demand. As more users adopt tablets as mainstream, more storage from hard drives will be needed from the backend servers and in the cloud to serve them. So while flash is appealing for use in consumption devices like tablets, let’s not let this obscure the main fact about tablets in the big picture of the storage market, which is that tablets aren’t hurting hard drive sales — in fact, they are helping.

When examining the storage market, we can look at present and future projections for HDD unit sales and by volume of capacity (in petabytes) shipped as per the chart below:

But we can also look at the data trends for consumption. In 2005, the world generated 150 exabytes (one billion gigabytes) of data. This year, it’s estimated that we’ll create and store 1,200 exabytes, and in 2020, a staggering 35,000 exabytes!¹ That’s 30x growth over the next 10 years.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard in the HDD world that the sky is falling. About a decade ago, MP3 player manufacturers shrank the device footprint and switched from hard drive storage to flash. Not long after, smartphones came on the scene, and those in the know posted that users would discard their PCs in favor of smartphones and, again, the hard drive industry would suffer. But the sky never fell, and neither MP3 players nor smartphones caused hard drive sales to decline. In fact, sales actually grew 14 percent between 2000 and 2005, and continued to grow 12 percent from 2005 to 2010.¹ The reality is that the more content consumption devices hit the market, the greater the demand for hard drive storage capacity, even when it is not local to the device.

Now let’s delve into some logic. Consumers didn’t discard their PCs for smartphones, and they aren’t going to chuck their PCs for tablets — the devices just aren’t that interchangeable. People are using their tablets for content consumption: to watch movies, browse the Internet, check email, play games, etc. But they aren’t really using their tablets for content creation, and certainly don’t rely on them for heavy duty applications. So logically, it follows that most people who own a tablet need a PC as well.

But just for argument’s sake, let’s assume users worldwide tossed out their PCs and replaced them with tablets. Right out of the gate, we would have a capacity problem. The bottom line is that all the flash in the world isn’t close to enough to meet the worldwide need for storage capacity, and that fact will remain true for a very, very long time. Here are some numbers to consider: In 2010, all the content created and replicated grew past a staggering zettabyte (one trillion gigabytes), and is expected to reach 1.8 zettabytes in 2011. Yet in 2010, the entire NAND flash memory industry manufactured just over 11 exabytes (you would need 1000 exabytes to equal every one zettabyte) of storage. Even with forecasts predicting that NAND flash production capacity will grow to 21 exabytes in 2011, only nine percent of that, or about two exabytes, will go to the flash memory used in tablets.² That’s not nearly enough capacity to meet demand.

Tablets with flash storage simply don’t have the onboard capacity to store the massive volumes of digital content that users want to access — anytime, anywhere. So all that data needs to be stored externally, in either local attached, networked or cloud storage — and all those formats rely on hard drives. So, once again, tablet popularity doesn’t hurt hard drive sales. In fact, some pundits see tablets as a net gain for hard drives: “For now, IDC sees the rise in demand for iPads/tablets as additive … for HDD makers in terms of the growth of information and digital content that has to be stored somewhere. That content and information consumed by these devices most likely will be stored on hard disk drives in data centers, cloud infrastructures, or on USB or network-attached personal storage devices in homes.”³

So in the end, even if some users do opt to replace their PCs with tablets, hard drives will still be in high demand. Content will continue its growth and storage will always be needed. Because nobody is saying worldwide demand for storage capacity is decreasing. Now that would be an ugly rumor!

Mark Wojtasiak is a Senior Manager in Product Marketing with Seagate Technology. For the past 5 years, Mark has been based in Seagate’s Shakopee, MN, design center where Seagate lives and breathes enterprise storage. Though Mark works in the middle of everything enterprise, his role at Seagate enables him to listen, learn, discuss, and share anything and everything related to storage. From the traditional desktop to external drives to the cloud, he develops insights on the latest storage technology, trends, customers, and users.

---

^{1 IDC Digital Universe Study, June 2011}

^{2 Gartner, Forecast: NAND Flash Supply and Demand, Worldwide, 1Q10-4Q12, 3Q11 Update, page 2, Table 15-3, September 2011}

^{3 http://storageeffect.media.seagate.com/2010/11/storage-effect/a-tablet-with-a-side-of-storage-please/}

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111005/it%e2%80%99s-all-about-content-why-tablets-help-hard-drives/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20111004/even-if-hes-not-at-apple-event-steve-jobs-sure-knows-how-to-put-on-a-show/ http://allthingsd.com/20111004/even-if-hes-not-at-apple-event-steve-jobs-sure-knows-how-to-put-on-a-show/#comments Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:18:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=128031

In the forefront of everyone’s mind covering the Apple event today, there is probably a fervent little wish that at some point its legendary co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs will saunter on out to take a much-deserved bow.

That seems unlikely for a variety of reasons — most especially because it would take the focus off Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook and also the new products being featured.

It certainly would be something to see, even if it would be difficult, in one stage moment, to encapsulate the profound impact of Jobs on Apple and on the tech world in general.

But it seems unlike Jobs to do that, mostly because it would be too obvious, too rote and too much of a Hollywood wrap-it-all-up cliche.

And, most of all, because it’s not different — a guiding idea that has always been at the heart of Apple and its best motto ever.

I thought a lot about that today, looking over all the frantic speculation about exactly what Apple would release this morning, and all the piles and piles of news stories, tweets and more about it all.

That has become typical around any Apple announcement, of course, and it can become more than a little wearying at times.

That said, when you take a moment to step back and think about it, all the hubbub is perhaps a good thing, given that a lot of it is about what could be done, what might be made, what people really hope for in technology.

That’s because — unlike other, more prosaic tech companies, who all make a lot of cool stuff, too — much of the crazy swirl around Apple seems to be about what’s possible and what could be.

And that is at the heart of the most important “one more thing” that Steve Jobs has given to Silicon Valley and beyond.

Which is to say, the impetus to think different.

In fact, it’s hard to say just how critical it is in this world today to zig in an opposite way from the safe norm, and to do it with a confidence that belies the difficulty of that shift.

In small tech ways, Jobs has done that again and again, dumping everything from removable batteries to Flash to internal disk drives to whatever he thought needed the heave-ho.

These are not easy decisions for a big tech company to make. But they are ones that are often muddled through by too many executives, to little effect and no definitive change, leaving a mushy pile of nothing.

As I like to say about a lot of big companies I cover — they think small, and then, well, think smaller.

For all its pros and cons, that has never been Apple under Jobs, and I hope that continues.

Jobs sounded a lot of the same arguments in his famous 2005 speech at Stanford University, in which he famously said: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

So in honor of his massive contribution: Let’s.

It reminds me of a poem by Shel Silverstein that I always read to my kids — so much so that they are more than a bit tired of hearing it, even if I never am:

Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child,
Listen to the DON’Ts
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me –
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

And while it is perhaps just another iPhone or whatever doodad Apple whips out today, the real point of it — and what Jobs has taught tech — is that it can be anything.

Enjoy:

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111004/even-if-hes-not-at-apple-event-steve-jobs-sure-knows-how-to-put-on-a-show/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110920/adobes-profit-falls-15-percent/ http://allthingsd.com/20110920/adobes-profit-falls-15-percent/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:16:53 +0000 Joan E. Solsman http://allthingsd.com/?p=122700 Adobe Systems Inc. posted a 15 percent drop in fiscal-third-quarter profit, hurt in part by higher marketing and stock-compensation costs.

The software maker’s shares rose in after-hours trading as the earnings were at the higher end of projections and Adobe gave an upbeat outlook.

The company, known for its Flash software and Creative Suite of design programs like Photoshop, has been ramping up on the expense side as it hires sales and marketing personnel.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110920/adobes-profit-falls-15-percent/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110915/windows-8s-new-style-browser-doesnt-run-flash/ http://allthingsd.com/20110915/windows-8s-new-style-browser-doesnt-run-flash/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:44:31 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=121185 While the new-style Internet Explorer in Windows 8 is in most respects similar to the desktop version that is also part of the new operating system, there is a key difference.

The touch-friendly version doesn’t work with plugins or extensions, meaning it can’t run Adobe Flash.

It’s an interesting choice. On one hand, Microsoft clearly sees the same things other folks do when it comes to the buggy nature of plugins and the rise of HTML5. Still, it eliminates what could have been a key advantage of Windows 8 over the iPad — that is, a touch-friendly browser that can run Flash. Plus, it adds another hurdle to Microsoft’s effort to bill the new operating system as without compromise.

To be clear, Windows 8 — even Windows 8 tablets — can still run Flash by using the desktop version of Internet Explorer (or other browsers, for that matter). However, the desktop applications lack the clean user interface that makes Windows 8 attractive on a touch-only slate.

Microsoft justifies the move by noting that even among sites that use Flash, many offer HTML5 video options in the absence of the Adobe plugin.

“For the web to move forward and for consumers to get the most out of touch-first browsing, the Metro style browser in Windows 8 is as HTML5-only as possible, and plug-in free,” IE head Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog post on Thursday. “The experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web.”

Update, 12:50 p.m. PT: The announcement raised a few questions for us here at AllThingsD, so we got a few more details. First of all, Microsoft is playing fair with its ban on plug-ins in the Metro version of IE — even its own Silverlight won’t run in the touch-first version of the browser. (That explains why we couldn’t stream the keynote on Thursday on the test device without switching to the desktop.)

Secondly, Microsoft clarified that both the Metro and desktop versions of IE will be in the Windows-on-ARM version of the browser, so plug-ins can be added on ARM-based machines. Whether the plug-in you want will be available or perform well is another question.

Also, while the Metro browser in the developer preview version doesn’t automatically switch to the desktop version when a plug-in is needed, there is a “switch to desktop” option within the touch-browser.

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