There is a lot of buzz around Apple vs Adobe recently. It all started few years ago, when Flash was forbidden on the iPhone. Somebody claims that it started even before. I really don’t want to get into the chronology of the issue. I am just wondering: do I really need to choose?
Many people took it personal and, as long as the are allowed (by laws and by companies’ policy) they are free to express their opinion. I understand their viewpoint. If you believe in a company, you invested your time by using/learning/building-on-top-of their tools, you get angry when these conflicts happen. And if you are angry you can have reactions like changing your hardware and software in favor of another producer.
I am writing this post because I feel weird about this situation, for I am not angry (yet :). I started my career with Flash, since MX 2004 version. The Flash platform enabled me to pay my bills and it still does, cause I develop, consult, teach and write about the Flash platform. Probably I did a good move a while ago by qualifying myself as “designer and developer of web, ria and mobile applications”. This is my short description, that you’ll find anywhere my logo appears. As you can see there is no commitment to any specific technology. Though I might have preferences about development tools, I think what clients need is a solution to their problems, not a list of complicated techie explanations about what is under the hood. Probably another good move I did almost three years ago was to expand my knowledge of the mobile industry, and specifically of the design and development of iPhone applications. I was fascinated by the tool and especially by the “ecosystem” of iTunes, ’cause the biggest obstacle for me has been commercializing, and not developing, my products. Although I have played with Titanium (and I liked it) I always stuck with Objective-c, because I felt I had more control on the development process and the final result. There are many support tools (debugger, leak hunter) and overall I like XCode.
I built applications for clients and I recently released HugeTweets, an app for the IPad in less time than planned (launch deadlines help :). So far I just I feel I have to say thanks, to both Adobe and Apple. As long as they will run on MacOsX I will use Adobe tools to design and develop. As long as Apple will produce MacOsX and will keep the current ratio for developers’ gain on the iTunes store, I will work on the iPhone/iPad.
In few words I don’t feel the need to say: “I am with …”.
Honestly, I also feel I am taking advantage of the recent 3.3.1 clause . I am NOT saying I am happy of a restrictive rule, I DO like open platforms, but at the moment my investment on the iphone/ipad market acquires value, ’cause there are less potential iphone developers, all those which invested on “third party” dev tools. Should I raise my hourly rate? :)
The main reason I didn’t fully switch to those tools is the lack of debug/measurement tools. Since I spend part of my time improving performance and memory usage of iphone/ipad apps (and Apple provides great tools to do it), I always wondered how can I do it in Flash/Titanium/OpenGap? Still wondering, if you have any idea drop a comment below …
Summing up, I feel weird because I am still using what I think is the best of both worlds: Adobe’s tools to design/mockup and MacOsX to develop on the iphone/ipad platform and I don’t feel the need to boycott any company.

Out of curiosity: how does Apple find out when an application is not built with c/objective-c? Any hidden code put in the binary by the compiler?

UPDATE: Even guys behind Corona are not worried.

ps: wanna betatest upcoming versions of my iPad application? All you need is an iPad and a Twitter account. Drop a message to the support email here: hugetweetsapp.com or dm me on Twitter. You’ll receive instructions.

You probably know Adobe is working to enable the development of iPhone applications on the Flash IDE. Yep, your imagination is correct: open Flash, write actionscript code, follow some step and end up with an iPhone application. The feature has been announced during the last Adobe Max conference. The great evangelist Lee Brimelow realized a video that illustrates how you can build iPhone applications through Flash CS5, which will be available as a beta by the end of the year. Though still limited (e.g. you don’t have a real simulator) the idea looks promising. I will continue to develop iPhone applications the “old way” but I’ll stay tuned for new developments on CS5. If you didn’t watch the video yet, go!

I have been elected moderator for the comments on Adobe AIR documentation.
Although this year I am really busy I accepted the proposal from Adobe because:

• Adobe is a great community. have a bug? post it on the forums and you’ll get a reply!
• if you ever attended an Adobe’s conference, people are friendly and share a lot of their experience.
• there are lots of people sustaining the community, spreading the word and enhancing good products.
• such a community gave me much when I was at the beginning. My service as moderator is a sort of “payback”

So thanks to Jeffrey Schwartz for picking me as moderator.


PS: from now on … pay attention at what you post! :)

Flash running on the android platform? Yes. Flash was already been demonstrated as running on android. Now Bsquare has been charged to make the porting of the flash technology to the android platform. I started the study of the iphone sdk a while ago, and so did many flexers/actionscripters. But this news makes me mumble. I like learning new languages/frameworks a priori but I probably will have to set a preference: android or iphone?

I have set up a poll here. State your opinion!

I am a fan of json.
I use it extensively but sometimes I am forced to use xml. A pretty well know way to parse xml in Flex and Adobe air is the following:

  var xml:XML = new XML("<data><tag>content</tag></data>");
  private function parse():void {
	 for each (var t:XML in xml.children()) {
		trace("tag name: "+t.name()+" tag content "+t.text());
	}
  }

Sometimes you are not the one who establishes tag names, e.g. xml comes from a webservice and you have to use it as it is. In developing Posty I had to parse xml coming from a microblogging service, Tumblr. A sample xml returned by tumblr is the following.

<post id="30451729" ...>
	  <regular-body>Text of my post...</regular-body>
</post>

Notice there is a dash in some tag name. To render data you parse the xml and extract relevant data. Adopting the same approach explained above, to retrieve the content of a tag you’d write:

  for each (var x:XML in xml.posts.post) {
    trace("my regular body is "+ x.regular-body);
  }

You will not be able to run this code. The compiler will say: access of undefined property body. What! I can’t parse xml with dashed tag names? No you can’t. More evidence from here[link]. The solution is to exploit a different syntax, which allows to access data in a dashed-name tag:

  for each (var x:XML in xml.posts.post) {
    trace("my regular body is "+ x.child("regular-body"));
  }

The compiler will be happy and your xml will be parsed successfully.

I started developing in Flash, doing websites. I then moved to Flash mobile (before the introduction of flite) and developed a mobile guide for a research project. When Flex was presented I didn’t dive into it, because I was busy with other projects and languages. When Adobe Air (introduced as Apollo) was released I started experimenting again. When I heard of the iphone I thought: “This is the platform of the future!”. But I felt disappointed when Steve confessed he didn’t like Flash on the iphone. Now I am simply thinking:

• isn’t iphone running Safari? Yes
• isn’t Safari based on webkit? Yes
• aren’t Adobe Air application partly running on webkit? Yes, if developed in javascript/html.

So? I think it is not far the moment that ad Adobe Air application will run on the iPhone.

What a great news! Looks like Adobe is already implementing a flash player for the iphone. I was having a look at the iPhone sdk and was fascinated by its features. But this is a good news. Steve was lamenting there is a gap between the Flash player and its lite version. Let’s hope the gap will be filled soon! I was tempted to port Posty to the iphone. Maybe I don’t need to to that and I can focus on new features.  
Update: check here and here.