JD on EP

Hinkmond Wong has a good example of the current anti-Flash argument:

Here's an article that talks about Java ME technology versus Flash. Dude has a bias against Java ME though. He says "only works marginally" and you have to "write once, test many". What a weenie. "Wah, I have to actually do my job and test my code." MSA addresses fragmentation, and there are many working on the solution instead of being part of the problem. One thing's for sure, Flash is not the answer.

Some people prefer doing more coding to delivering completed projects, and don't mind increased testing and maintainence costs. Takes all kinds.

I love Flash Lite and love the possibilities, but my one and only major gripe is the lack of interface with a phones main features Bluetooth, Camera and the Diary all of which I've seen accessed my j2me applications

[jd sez: True, device-specific coding does offer advantages too. Once a market developers for a particular device feature then it usually gets componentized, and jumps up into the service layer. But for a particular device with a new feature, low-level coding is usually the first way to access it.]

The fundamental advantage of Flash on desktop was/is the fact of almost instantaneuos upgrade spread: from realease date to be installed in the vast majority of machines there is only a few months lag. This advantage is non existant in the mobile version, which, thanks to its non upgradability, promote heavy fragmentation of the installed user base, so when a developer want to use features of the newer version, his/her potential user base starts again from 0. Before you can think of deploying a service based on a new version you have to wait at least 18 months so there is a significant user base; by that time Adobe probably would have announced at least another two versions of FlashLite, trenching your expections again.
Also, it would be good to know what versions are actually comprised in the 150-200-250 Millions devices Adobe says have FL on-board. It is quite misleading the way they portrait as it looks like these devices all have the latest version of FL, while in fact it is heavily fragmented between 1.0-1.1-2.0-2.1. Another important datum missing is where these devices are actually located, if you plan to sell a service to Vodafone UK, they could not care less about these device being 70% in Japan or somewhere else.

Hi John. We (Adobe) did not show anyone Flash Lite 3 on any device last week at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. Please update your post to reflect this so the broader community doesn't think we showed Flash Lite 3. I've already contacted the original person (Mike) and asked him the same thing. Thanks.

[jd sez: The report got it wrong? Sheesh. Thanks for the heads-up -- I'll keep my eye on this and update this echo when they update the original. Thank goodness for comments....]

i guess the much needed feature is add an API in FL to download & save content locally. i.e. imnages/additional swf/updated contens etc.

FlashCast offer this, but it diffirent implementation.

currently all my clients are asking for apps who can download and save upadted content locally to save data charges.

i hope abode will pick it. :P

// chall3ng3r //

"Also, it would be good to know what versions are actually comprised in the 150-200-250 Millions devices Adobe says have FL on-board."

Yeah, it would be good to know. I reckon 95% of that figure is Flash Lite 1.1

Endry Deloir raises some solid points, although I suspect from a more pessimistic viewpoint than mine.

Yes, laptops have an "update your computer" dynamic which is not present on phones. This isn't unique to Flash Lite. Fortunately the hardware cycle is faster with mobile than laptops, but there isn't the "majority in six months" that we see with the regular Adobe Flash Player.

For stats, Adobe sez "X million device have Flash Lite installed", which is correct. This would be a mix of versions, and to my knowledge there are no publicly collected stats as each manufacturer ships the latest version, month by month. I would agree that predictions about your own particular audience may be only slightly informed by stats about the public at large.

I couldn't guess when the pocket scene would evolve enough to support manipulation of the local storage system.

jd/adobe

Still this has a really nice ring to it. Now that I tasted AS3 I will not ever go back to AS2, even for mobile I'd rather wait to see if phones pick up the next lite version that is AS3 based.

And doing what Flash Video did to the web, doing that for mobile would be equally awesome. I can't wait.

Being able to write real apps with Flex and AS3 was an eye opener for me. Previous versions of flash didn't seem appropriate for application development. The whole movie analogy sucks. It was just too weird coming from a computer science background and having written many apps in C, C++, Java and PHP over the years.

When AS3 is supported on mobile devices I'll be porting my windows CE apps to swf and not look back. AS3 will be the Java that was promised but never delivered. Until then its still a toy IMHO.