iPhone out in England and Germany; Still no Flash

I've tried to keep calm about the whole no-Flash-on-iPhone-but-Apple-says-iPhone-uses-real-Internet thing. You know that.

It's beginning to get a tad ridiculous. iPhone in England and Germany as of a few hours ago, France in a few weeks, apparently Canada by Hannukah (yes, I'm Jewish)... yet still no Flash!

How do you suggest you offer the real Internet, Apple, without Flash? In case you, I don't know, forgot, Flash is on like 99.3% of computers (that's really everyone but Microsoft fanboys and people still using DOS, remember).

And if I'm not mistaken, as of a few hours, our estimates say that Flash Player 9 has been installed over 3 billion times!

I mean, I think our engineers can get Flash to work well (to some very limited extent) on Windows Mobile (emphasis on very limited), and now they can't wait to get Flash working and work on getting it officially packaged with Google's Android!

Well, anyway, have a good weekend.

Mozilla's Prism

I'm not sure if you've heard or read about Mozilla's 'Prism,' which a lot of people are comparing to AIR.

I'm here to tell you two things about it: it's not anything interesting--from what I can gather, it's merely a browser without an address bar that goes to a specific place (like Gmail or Adobe.com). Is this so revolutionary? I really don't think so.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this.

And also, they released Prism for Mac and Linux a bit earlier today. Again, there was much fanfare, but it's not really exciting nor does it do anything revolutionary for those operating systems. Firefox has been available for OS X and Linux for years now...

So, in conclusion, Prism is...

Firefox minus the address bar that now works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Don't worry, eager Linux users -- AIR for Linux is in the works and we're trying to get it out ASAP.

Oh, and while I can't confirm this, we're hoping we can have Flash running on Google's Android mobile operating system. I'll tell you if I have any more news concerning this great operating system (in case you can't tell, I love the idea of Android).

Redmond Developer News: AIR Gaining Ground

The title sounds a bit nicer than the article actually is. Though I must admit, you know you've got something good when the journal 'powering the Windows software revolution' actually mentions you.

Of course, Adobe is 'trying to catch up to Silverlight.' How many times do I have to remind these people that Silverlight is trying to catch up with Flash!

And Mr. Desmond, AIR is not just an extension of Flash Player for desktop applications. It's a full runtime that also allows you to use JavaScript/HTML (and of course AJAX), as well as Flash and PDF content. Plus, you can mix these together. Want to put a Flash filter on some text via JavaScript? Easily done!

However, my favorite part is the idea that people have to "buy into Flash" to use AIR. Again, not so. But what can be expected from an analyst from Directions on Microsoft?

I mean, come on! Try doing some research before you go and blast Adobe. I don't care how much you like Silverlight. I just can't see it passing Flash in terms of market penetration, which is over 99.1%. Yeah, 99.1% of Internet connected computers on Windows, Mac, Linux and others have Flash. And the only holdouts are people like you and Microsoft fanboys. Oh, and people who still have DOS or Windows 3.11 (but they shouldn't count).

And don't even think about preinstalling Silverlight with Vista SP1, Steve. I'll have the EU and US Government at your door instantaneously. Oh, wait... they're already there.

Silverlight Slower than Flash Running WinForms?

So, Silverlight is Microsoft's whole competitor to Flash... and it's all .NET and everything... so how come WinForms works slower on Silverlight than on Flash?

I think it even looks a little bit better in Flash, though that may just be because of the size difference between the two examples.

Adobe's policy is to keep Windows off of Flash, because that would give Flash a bad reputation -- not like Windows Vista is a memory hog or everything. It seems like Kevin Lynch (Chief Software Architect) and I will have to sit down about this policy. Windows technology is making the move to Flash and is running more smoothly and with a smaller footprint than on similar (yet admittedly obsolete) Microsoft technology.

Just another example of how great the Flash platform is. Flash can make Windows run better than it's supposed to.