I figured I’d post my thoughts on it too. 😀 Read on after the break.

Section 3.3.1

I emailed Apple about this earlier today as it directly relates to some upcoming business decisions. Apple has yet to clarify the intentions to us or the public, not surprising. All of this hype could be over nothing. Let’s take the route of everyone being correct: Apple did this to hurt Adobe and the Flash CS5 release. In that case, they are foolish and childish but…their decision. I’m hoping Apple gets slapped like Microsoft did and they can no longer sit in their high chair of arrogance looking down on all others not gulping their kool-aid.

Solution: Adobe, try this. If Flash CS5 simply exported an XCode project, Section 3.3.1 would be moot and I’d be a super happy camper. I could take that project and do wonders with it.

That’s it. Do that and you’ll have provided a better solution, than presently available anyway. That is not a shot at the Flash dev’ team. You’ve done amazing work but there are many issues w/ the current implementation (see blog post link above), mainly we have to wait on you to make SDK updates and we don’t even get access to the entire SDK anyway.

My Wallet Alliance

There is a shift happening right now (here, , which is most likely making Dell, Microsoft, and Google quite happy. People are walking with their feet/wallets and choosing other platforms, etc due to disgust at Apple. I will not follow this trend. My Mac is a superior dev’ environment for pretty much everything except .NET development, to which Parallels solves this issue (although rather poorly) or I can use my old Dell.

I truly admire Adobe and Apple. Adobe has made me a ton of dough over the past 10’sh years and Apple has improved my productivity tremendously over the last 1.5’sh years. I absolutely refuse to allow my distaste for Apple’s decision to cause me to drop thousands of dollars of hardware, software, and implementation time. It just isn’t that serious for me. I may or may not reinvest but I absolutely will not ditch what we have. Presently my company, Katapult Media, is about to hire its first employee next month. He is getting a MacBook Pro without a doubt but might wind up with an Android phone. 😉

Bottom line is my wallet will walk to whatever vendor has the right tool(s) or software for the job. Right now, that is Apple (hardware, some software) and Adobe (software; + some others).

My Development Alliance

Katapult Media is not tied to one technology. I started the company with that in mind and we’ve had years where .NET ruled our profits and others where some variant of the Flash Platform ruled or ColdFusion was king. Apple is playing dirty but I be dang if I let it keep us from 85M users! Even with the 80/20 rule that’s still 17M.

Now, maybe I’d sing another tune if I bought into the Flash CS5 iPhone Packager and put KM’s time and money into production but I never did. Doing our apps natively appealed to me much more, mainly for the reasons listed in my other blog post (same link as above).

Someone is completely transforming their career and leaving iPhone OS for Android, or whatever lands next. Great for sticking to your guns dude but poo on wasting all of that time and financial investment, especially when he has a family, over a corporate dispute. To each his own.

Ultimately, Apple is doing what they feel is best for their business, as am I by not allowing emotions to rule KM’s markets, and their users. Granted…they are missing the mark by a long shot but getting insanely rich at the same time. As long as dough rolls in, hammers will drop on any nearing their pots of gold.

iDevice vs Flash

This is all supposedly Apple’s way of saying “Oh no you didn’t” to Adobe saying “We’ll fix you with our Packager” to Apple…errr…Jobs saying “Flash sucks and we won’t allow it!” It sounds like we need some soap opera music and a voice over for this drama.

Ultimately, Flash on the iPhone isn’t that big of a deal for me. Do I want it? HECCCCKKKKK YEAH! KM’s main income right now is around Flash based media players. I’d love to pull one up on my phone. It isn’t that important to me though. It is a phone…meh. While cool and I’d definitely enjoy it I doubt I’d use it beyond geeking out since I really only use it for sms, phone calls (imagine that), emails, and a game every now and then.

Now, Flash on the iPad? I’m purposefully not getting one because of Flash not being invited to the party and the locked down nature of the iPhone OS (ie – walled garden). This is a media goddess, or so it is touted, and would be a pimp device to sit in a coffee shop and watch CNN.com Live or Hulu or the Master’s. With so many other devices (HP Slate, Gemini, etc) coming out with better specs, an open environment, and Flash, the iPad is bad ground for me to plant seeds. I’ll develop apps all day for it though. 😉

Granted, other businesses will eventually develop native apps (see Netflix as an example of not waiting for Silverlight support) and Apple will keep raking in dough, smiling at the Flash pundits (myself included), and touting Flash as bad (in terms of the future of the web; ie – viva la HTML 5).

Conclusion

Apple is blowing it, badly, in my opinion but it matters not to them. Adobe has a way around it…just do it. People are emotional. Section 3.3.1 changes nothing but my perception and awareness of Apple’s ways.

Back to my regularly scheduled blog silence. 😉 haha (i’ll try to blog more, I promise)

Update:

Kevin Lynch has posted about the upcoming CS5 release.

Update (more-so a clarification):

I will eventually get an iPad for dev’ purposes but my targeted tablet device is the Gemini w/ the HP Slate next.