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Microsoft Announces Silverlight 4 Beta, Adds Chrome Support

Cory Bohon — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:46:32 -0600

Today, Microsoft announced version 4 of their Flash-like software for web browsers.

According to TechCrunch, the software, which is currently in beta, now has support for Google's Chrome browser. The new version also includes support for fluid animations, webcam, microphone, and printing support. TC is also reporting that the software has a 200 percent faster start time than its predecessor.

Silverlight 4 also comes with the ability to take web applications and sites like Facebook and turn them into a seperate application on your desktop, similar to the functionalities of Adobe-AIR.

Silverlight 4 makes it seem that Microsoft is closing in on Adobe and their Flash software that could turn out to be clunky in comparison. You can read the full details and see more screenshots on the TechCrunch website.

Adobe Unleashes Flash Player 10.1 And AIR 2.0

J.R. Bookwalter — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:37:50 -0600

This morning, Adobe Systems made some dreams come true with pre-release updates to two of their key Internet products: Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0. The updates were previously announced in early October and previewed at the recent Adobe MAX 2009 event, but are now available for everyone.

While technically an Adobe Labs beta release, Flash Player 10.1 brings some significant performance enhancements for Mac, Windows and Linux users and their desktop browsers. Sadly, the mobile version of Flash Player is still missing in action, but is expected for Palm’s webOS later this year, with additional devices to be supported in 2010.

Flash Player and AIR both now include multi-touch support (including gestures), a global error handler and long-awaited local microphone access. Additional improvements on the AIR 2.0 front include a native process API, mass storage device detection, open document API, improved socket support and speedier WebKit.

Windows PCs and notebooks also get hardware decoding of H.264 video out of Flash Player, but this feature isn’t yet available to other systems: “H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS,” reads Adobe’s tech notes. “Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate adding the feature to Linux and Mac OS in future releases.”

Tech blogs have been buzzing this morning with early reports that Flash Player 10.1 still features some major playback improvements for Mac users, however, particularly with full-screen Hulu.com viewing. Using a Mac Pro, Anandtech saw their CPU utilization go from 450% CPU load to only 190%. “With actual GPU-accelerated H.264 decoding I’m guessing those CPU utilization numbers could drop to a remotely reasonable value,” they reported.

Both updates are available now at the Adobe Labs site.

Vimeo Shows Some Love To iPhones (And Android, Too)

J.R. Bookwalter — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:49:52 -0600

Vimeo has been a popular high-quality alternative to YouTube, particularly with content publishers and bloggers. Unfortunately, uploading videos to Vimeo has left one particular (and rather large) group of potential viewers in the dark: iPhones.

Like many video upload sites, Vimeo relies on Adobe Flash for its content delivery. YouTube got around this limitation by also offering iPhone-friendly H.264 versions of its content in addition to Flash. Not wanting to leave out a large swath of users, Vimeo has begun to make the same transition, much to the jubilant cries of bloggers everywhere.

“We’ve been working on it for the last few weeks,” the company proclaimed today. “This is sort of the prelude of offering Plus members iPhone support; and in the future, an app.” For now, Vimeo is focusing strictly on making its Staff Picks and HD video showcases iPhone-friendly, but that situation will change soon enough: “In the future, like the next several weeks — maybe longer, we’ll be offering Plus users the option to transcode their videos to an iPhone version too.”

Of course, the Vimeo love-fest isn’t exclusive to the iPhone — Android users can also get in on the fun. But as Danny Allen at Gizmodo points out, that may not be a big issue with Flash 10.1 on the way — although the verdict is still out on whether iPhone users will have something else to rejoice about when that time comes.

Podcast #114: Apple TV Gets an Update and Adobe Taunts Apple

Mac|Life Staff — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:37:06 -0600

The Apple TV makes its way back into the Apple news cycle with an OS update. The Apple TV also gets to ride the coat tails of the report that Apple is shopping a $30 a month TV subscription service to television networks.

Finally, Adobe gets all passive aggressive on Apple with its latest jab at the iPhone's lack of Flash.

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This week's Battlestar Applactica picks:

Gowalla - Free

Instapaper - Free

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Adobe Taunts Apple, Still No iPhone Flash

J Keirn-Swanson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:38:56 -0600

While many of us are familiar with the teeny little cube informing us that we've ended up at a Flash-based site on our iPhones, it appears that Apple's intransigence on the software plug-in has irked Adobe.

Go to Adobe's site on your phone to download Flash and you'll get this tight-lipped message:

Despite an announcement at the beginning of the year that Apple and Adobe were going to attempt working together to bring some form of Flash to the iPhone, nothing on the horizon seems to suggest this is any closer to happening. While Steve Jobs thinks full-fledged Flash is too bloated for the iPhone and Flash Lite is too wimpy, no one seems to be talking much about his desired "missing product in the middle."

It's unlikely that Adobe's passive aggressive message is likely to have much of an effect, but it is a nice reminder of where to put the blame for this particular lack on the iPhone.

Mozilla's Mystery App Coming Soon

J Keirn-Swanson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:22:30 -0500

While Apple retains the right to deny apps that they claim duplicate core features (the supposed excuse for the Google Voice blanket rejection), there are any number of apps that do just that. Try searching browsers in the app store for proof.

So with an announcement from Mozilla's CEO John Lilly that the open source giant plans to "release an app to the iPhone App Store in the next few weeks," that he claims will "surprise people," speculation began. Theories centered around two strong contenders.

Tech blogger Om Malik has one theory. He interviewed Lilly when the comment was made, then later discussed Weave with Lilly and Jay Sullivan, VP of Mozilla Mobile. Weave, a Firefox extension that syncs bookmarks, cookies, passwords, and other elements of your Firefox experience to multiple machines, allows you access to the same data from different locations. Malik believes Mozilla's new app will allow iPhone users to access this information while on the go. Would this app play nice with Safari? Other apps do offer an "Open in Safari" option, so that seems the least controversial route.

Others, such as Kevin Tofel at jkOnTheRun, suspect that Mozilla plans to present an iPhone version of Fennec, their mobile browser already supported on Windows Mobile. It's no secret that Mozilla wants to get in on the mobile game in a big way and getting on the iPhone would be a feather in the browser's cap. Tofel goes on to indulge his speculation with fantasies involving a mobile version of Flash built in to Fennec that would bring the entirety of the Web to the iPhone at last.

While the first theory would hardly qualify as a surprising move, Tofel's at least has the level of improbability to it that might qualify. Whether or not Apple approves such an app is a completely different matter. Mozilla has stated previously that Firefox won't be on the iPhone and Apple has all but declared Flash on the iPhone a non-starter. Time will tell in this matter. In this case, a few weeks. Feel free to indulge your own speculation or debunking in the comments.

Podcast #110: Creating iPhone Apps with Flash and More Mac Rumors

Mac|Life Staff — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:10:32 -0500

Adobe announced that Flash Professional CS5 will allow developers to create native iPhone apps and we discuss the pros and cons of the announcement and ready ourselves for the upcoming swarm of Flash games converted to iPhone games in the App Store.

A Google ad sets the rumor world ablaze with speculation. Macs gain a few percentage points in the American home and we invite you to join our DonorsChoose '09 Challenge.

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This week's Battlestar Applactica picks:

Annoy-A-Teen - $.99

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Flash CS5 Will Let You Create Native iPhone Apps [Updated]

Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:53:30 -0500

Today Adobe announced that Flash Professional CS5 will allow Flash developers and designers to create native iPhone apps.

The applications are built using the current rules of Apple's iPhone Developer Program. They are designed and built utilizing Action Script 3 with Flash platform tooling. Developers can take advantage of the accelerometer and the multi-touch capabilities of the iPhone using Flash Professional CS5.

This is pretty exciting, especially when you consider the amount of Flash games on the Web right now that are unavailable on the iPhone.

Adobe showcased a few applications that have already been built using Flash Professional CS5 that are already in the App Store.

Fickleblox - $.99

Chroma Circuit - $.99

Updated: If you're interested in joining the public beta of Flash Professional CS5, sign up here. Adobe told us that it would be live before the end of the calendar year. A release date for the CS5 Suite hasn't been set yet. Adobe updates their CS suite every 18 to 24 months.

As of now, there is no word on if iPhone features beyond multi-touch and the accelerometer, like the compass, camera, etc, will be available via the Adobe Flash Professional CS5 developing environment.

If you plan on developing an app using Flash CS5, check out this Adobe Developer Connection blog posting about using the upcoming Flash app to develop for iPhone.The most interesting part is how the porcess works:

How it all works

We enabled this by using the Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) compiler infrastructure. LLVM is a modular, flexible compiler system that is used widely in a variety of projects. The key reason we choose LLVM is its flexibility and applicability to iPhone development.

We created a new compiler front end that allowed LLVM to understand ActionScript 3 and used its existing ARM back end to output native ARM assembly code. We call this Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation—in contrast to the way Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR function on the desktop using Just in Time (JIT) compilation. Since we are able to compile ActionScript to ARM ahead of time, the application gets all the performance benefits that the JIT would offer and the license compliance of not requiring a runtime in the final application.

By doing the compilation step, we allow developers to create applications using their Flash skills and their knowledge of ActionScript 3. In the process, we also expose the APIs that developers are familiar with so they can not only use the ActionScript language but follow the customary app-building model. When you build your application for the iPhone, there is no interpreted code and no runtime in your final binary. Your application is truly a native iPhone app.

We'll keep an eye on this as it unfolds.