After all the bad blood between Adobe and Apple, you wouldn’t expect much cooperation.  After Apple hilariously hypocritical accusations of unethically proprietary business practices, Adobe retaliated with their brilliantly tongue-in-cheek “We Heart Apple" Campaign, (not to mention the release of flash player’s source code).  This whole debacle isn’t exactly conducive to working together, yet low and behold, flash 10.1 actually went out of their way to make the new version more compatible with Apple computers.  No, you still won’t be able to use flash player on your iPhone (at least not yet), but all of those unpleasant little kinks that you inevitably run into while running Flash in Safari have apparently been ironed out.  What’s even more impressive is the fact that this was actually a joint effort on behalf of both companies.

Adobe has just announced the official release of Flash Player 10.1. Despite the exceedingly underwhelming title, this new version actually has some pretty awesome upgrades.  First and foremost (but perhaps most blandly) there have been a number of generic upgrades to the video playback itself.  It will run smoother, for longer, and with the capacity for a higher resolution of videos.  Apparently HD is not out of the picture in the newest edition.  However, the new improvements that really have us salivating are all in the bells and whistles.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, was at D8 answering a streaming interview session with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg last night on the opening day of this year’s D8 Conference. The interview formally started at around 6:20 pm PST and had questions ranging from Microsoft and his thoughts on Flash, to Google as a competitor.

Adobe announced a digital publishing platform software that allows publishers to create spectacular digital versions of their magazines. It was the world renowned WIRED magazine that supplied input for the initial version of the technology. The product and pricing information are not yet released, but you can see the program in action in this month’s issue of Wired Magazine on your iPad. David Burkett, Adobe’s Vice President and general manager of Creative Solutions promised to make the software available to all publishers soon and added that the company aims to develop versions that work across multiple hardware platforms.

We all remember Steve Jobs’ personal blog post criticizing Adobe for their proprietary business practices surrounding Flash Player.  It was big for a day or two; we had a laugh at the grand hypocrisy of the whole issue, and then silently hoped that one of these evil giants would take down the other in their vie for monopolistic dominance.  Well, it seems that Adobe wasn’t content to just sit back and let everyone else’s “I told you so” make their argument for them.  Heck, they weren’t even content to leave the original argument remotely intact.  Adobe has officially issued their response in the form of a very strong marketing campaign, and they may come out smelling like roses this round.

A Google Android Tablet Prototype displayed by Adobe at the Web 2.0 Expo grabbed the attention of many. What is so special about the Android Multi-Touch Prototype?  The prototype tablet “runs Adobe’s Flash and Air apps flawlessly”, says Zedomax blog. The tablet “was showing the current workings of the Wired magazine’s Google Tablet app.” The Adobe booth was also fully stocked with smartphones from Nexus One, Droid, and the Palm Pre.

Many of you were probably aware of Apple's stance on Flash; and if you weren't before, you almost certainly are now. The internet has been buzzing after Steve Jobs' explanatory attack against them for his fans yesterday. It seems that we are torn between who is in the right in the Flash/Apple debate.  Unfortunately in this case, there really isn't anybody in the right, just varying degrees of evil.

Remember all of those second rate “smartphone friendly” versions of Youtube videos that only worked most of the time?  Remember the frustration at all the free games and flash-based websites that you couldn’t access?  Remember how every streaming site that isn’t Youtube just flat out wouldn’t run on your handset?  Well now you can officially forget all of that because Google’s Andy Rubin has announced publicly that Android 2.2 WILL have full flash support.  No, this isn’t some “basically the same thing” module that will work only until Adobe decides to upgrade, or a shady pirated Flash translator that’s probably filled with spyware.  This is honest to goodness “half the internet runs on me” Flash player; and it’s about time.

It was inevitable that Adobe would get their feathers riled up at Apple over the whole “never going to work on our hardware” thing.  Apple is telling them that their most commonly used software is going to be intentionally circumnavigated by the leading smartphone brand on the planet.  That has to sting, and right where it hurts: the wallet.  What can Adobe hope to do?  In the world of smartphones few have tangled with Apple and come out on top; and unlike previous contenders, Adobe doesn’t even have their own phone to use.

Okay, so Apple has banned Flash and all similar self-executing code bases from iPhone apps.  The deed is done, the die has been cast, and very little can change this now.  The big question is, why did Apple do this?  Sure we are all familiar with Apple’s seemingly random affairs with regulation of their software, but this regulation could be a bit more self destructive than usual.  Unfortunately, we can rule out the theory of them trying to push forward the HTML5 platform, because that is self-executing as well. So it's technically banned by their newest regulations.  Why then Apple, why?

As we all know Apple has decided to be rather stifling in its regulation of what will and will not work on the new OS4.  Yeah they are offering multitasking regardless of developer, but getting the Apple seal of approval is going to be an arduous process.  Perhaps the most strict of their new regulations is the carte-blanche ban on self-executing code in apps, and a limitation on languages.  This prevents any sort of Flash based app from being allowed to run on OS4, and effectively cuts Adobe out o the iPhone loop (and soon to swell ad profit).

The Mobile World Congress ended earlier this week. It was four days of telecommunication bigwigs trying to out-do each other, and the dust has finally settled. Now that all the cell-phone caravans are packing up and leaving Barcelona, we can finally clear our heads and look at all the smartphone toys we have to look forward to in the coming year. There was allot of flash and pizaz, but at the end of the day we can tell who was innovating and who was a snake-oil-salesman.

Anyone who uses the internet interacts with Adobe Flash in some way or the other. Whether it be on games like Farmville, or while checking your stocks on Google finance, or browsing websites on FWA or watching shows on Hulu - we all love Flash. Even if we don't love it we do use it. A great part of the internet/digital world operates on Flash. Many websites use Flash plug-ins to operate and others are completely constructed on Flash. In a world like this our dear Apple has decided not to include Adobe Flash on it's iPad and iPhone and other products. In my last post about Adobe expressing unhappiness over this I introduced the concept of no Flash. In this post I will elaborate on that.

Where the world seems to be rejoicing at the launch of the Apple iPad, Adobe isn't happy with Apple. Adrian Ludwig, Adobe's Group Manager for Flash Platform Product Marketing issued a statement on his blog about the new product yesterday. The new product and Apple iPhone do not support Flash. And that makes the Flash Platform Marketing team at Adobe unhappy. Apple may have it's reasons but Adobe thinks that this limits the users from multitasking on the web.

We all love and regularly use Youtube. Whether we use it to recreate, work, or recreate when we should be working, that little flash movie engine has become a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. However, in our modern society of instant gratification, even Youtube is sometimes too slow.