Adobe has finally announced support for simultaneous Flash and HTTP video streaming from the Flash Media Server product. This means that devices that don't support Adobe's Flash player or plugin, like iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, will instead get HTTP streaming videos. Same content, same server, easier for broadcasters, easier for users. And it only took years. (Microsoft announced something similar for Silverlight back in November of 2009.)
According to Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, Apple is out to get Flash. Which I guess is fair since Flash has been out to melt every Apple device I've ever owned. Fast Company quotes:
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer snuck into Adobe to talk with their CEO, Shantanu Narayen, about how they could team up, cartoon villain-style, to take on the growing mobile power of Apple and one Steven P. Jobs. the NYT Bits blog says:
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could team up in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has told Telegraph that, since Apple's just not that into Flash, he and his almost ubiquitous plugin are moving on:
"We believe in open systems. We believe in the power of the internet and in customers making choices and I think a lot of the controversy was about their decision at that point. They've made their choice. We've made ours and we've moved on." [Telegraph]
The iOS 4 GM seed (gold master) released during WWDC 2010 once again made changes to Section 3.3.2 of Apple's licensing agreement -- specifically the part that deals deals with the use of cross-compilers. The changes this time around may not make things all better, but it could make things slightly better for some developers. Matt Drance had this to say about the change to Section 3.2.2:
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Apple has recently made headlines for banning cross-compilers in iPhone OS 4 SDK, and Steve Jobs fleshed out the specifics in his Thoughts on Flash open letter. This is nothing new. Back in September 1997, Apple and Steve Jobs made headlines for killing something else -- the Mac clones. And as is often the case, the past sheds some interesting light on the present and future of Apple and the iPhone and iPad. This is what Doc Searls wrote about it at the time:
