Flash Professional CS5 will build native iPhone and iPod Touch applications

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

by wallflower • 17 years ago

112 79 17 years ago

labs.adobe.com

This is epic, and I don't think everyone realizes what this means. Developers will be able to just... export. The revenue model for Flash games used to be: free + advertising. With this move, those same games can be released on the app store and actually charge money, or fall back to the advertising model. Its a simple way for developers to cash in. The funny thing, and this is what makes very little sense, is why did Adobe do this at all? There's no doubt that little feature cost them some serious cash, and for what? To make Apple rich?

allenp3• 17 years ago

I'm sure Adobe's motivation is to make money selling licenses to software developers. If I remember it is about $700/seat for this software. In terms of their cost, it would make sense that Apple did some of the heavy lifting on this as part of an agreement to keep Flash off their devices. Unity is another example of a company doing this same thing and making money at it too.

eob3• 17 years ago

I'll second that. Adobe wants to become an alternative platform for the iPhone. Right now it's Objective-C or the highway.

I can't stand JavaScript (and therefore ActionScript) but, as an iPhone developer, watching this video made me think, "gosh, I should start learning flash". Objective-C is a nice language once you get used to it, but I can't imagine that it could compete against Flash in animation-heavy programming tasks.

bemmu• 17 years ago

Not only that, but since those devs get their Flash apps distributed to portal sites, they can easily advertise the iPhone version inside their games. I'm quite sure a link to buy the app for your phone will be much more compelling than a random interstitial ad.

dpcan• 17 years ago

They had to come up with SOME reason for folks like me to upgrade from CS4 to CS5. CS4 is already so feature-rich I probably never would have upgraded.

Add this little gem, and well, here's my $400-$700. Done.

wallflower2• 17 years ago

One of the first apps written in Flash and cross-compiled to Objective-C native in the wild of the App Store:

http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2009/10/5/iphone-justl...

barredo• 17 years ago

This is nothing but good. Let's see if Apple likes it. Didn't Apple dislike the iPhone apps made with .Net+Framework?

drawkbox• 17 years ago

There are like 5-10 top apps built with Unity3D such as Zombieville USA that is Mono based and cross compiled. So in short, now they love them because they make money from them (30%).

eob3• 17 years ago

Yeah this is good for everyone. However it might be bad for Flash's chances in MobileSafari, however. Apple wants to funnel people through apps, not web sites. If they can make the argument that the iPhone supports flash because you can compile to native format, it might take the heat off them w/r/t integrating Flash into Safari.

bprater2• 17 years ago

Seems like a huge opportunity for folks who are fluent in Flash/AS3 and haven't had time to jump on the Objective-C bandwagon. It's likely that since it's compiled down, it'll run faster than interpreted Flash! Great move by Adobe! (I'm curious if Flex will work.)

pcestrada• 17 years ago

I would expect Flex to work as well since it's basically an actionscript GUI library written on top of Flash. There is a mxml compiler that takes your Flex gui code and converts it to a SWF. And it sounds like LLVM takes a SWF and turns it into Obj-c code so I think it would work.

zackattack2• 17 years ago

I'm calling it now: ECMAScript will be the most important language over the next three years.

simonw• 17 years ago

The problem is ActionScript is pretty far from the EMCAScript you get in browsers - ActionScript was based on a proposed standard for ECMAScript which was later abandoned, so it's pretty much a different language now.

zackattack2• 17 years ago

Fair enough. Probably true for AS3, which seems to superficially resemble Java. One of my hobby projects (HipHopGoblin) uses a bunch of AS2, which I find very similar to JavaScript.

jswinghammer• 17 years ago

This is true regardless of this latest development.

wallflower2• 17 years ago

Adobe is using LLVM.

There is no runtime.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html

xal• 17 years ago

That's some amazing work. Adobe must have dedicated the A-Team to that task.

moe• 17 years ago

Never understimate Adobe. Despite their misguided stabs towards DRM (oh god when will they learn) they have some good engineering there.

PDF, Photoshop, Flash, despite all their flaws and sometimes dubious origins, wouldn't have dominated their respective markets for decades if there wasn't also at least a bit of quality engineering in each. ;-)

marbletiles2• 17 years ago

"There is no runtime"

Ah, so they got Flash on the phone by taking away the bit that makes it suck bells. Good job, Adobe. Amazing what you can do when Apple forces you to not to be craptacular.

stcredzero• 17 years ago

Thank goodness they aren't as bad a case as AT&T. I'm still waiting for some Apple-y goodness to rub off on them.

iron_ball2• 17 years ago

Does that mean you'd like Flash content to run as non-VM-boxed binaries on your PC? Or did I misunderstand what you meant?

siong1987• 17 years ago

Lol. And, LLVM is mainly sponsored by Apple. Pwnd.

jimboyoungblood• 17 years ago

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.

"AOT Compilation"?! Amazing!! They should patent this!

but yeah, sounds pretty cool.

maximilian• 17 years ago

The MacRuby guys are doing this as well. (AOT) They are also using LLVM incidentally.

What I'm wondering about is how they do AOT for dynamic code. Do they have every possible path for a data type compiled? This would seem silly..maybe LLVM has some clever ways about this?

adatta02• 17 years ago

so couldn't you then take this and then target AS3 to say native x86 code, bypassing the Flash VM entirely?

ed3• 17 years ago

This is essentially what AVM2 does already, only it's JIT rather than AOT.

johnnybgoode2• 17 years ago

That explains how they deal with your code, but what are they doing for the Flash Player bits? All of that wasn't written in ActionScript, right?

For example, if your app needs to play a video, where is the video player coming from? If it's Adobe's own, doesn't that mean Flash-equivalent bits are going to be in every compiled app? In that case, and this would be consistent with what they're saying, the main reason for this AOT compilation instead of JIT is apparently to comply with Apple's legal terms.

robc• 17 years ago

Looking at some of the apps Adobe are showcasing - it appears they're all around 10mb, which suggests they're including all the runtime bits in there.

bprater2• 17 years ago

Looks like it'll have all the AIR bits-and-pieces in it. So you'll get database/filesystem access, etc.

oliverkofoed• 17 years ago

MonoTouch (monotouch.net) is exactly the same approach for .NET instead of Flash.

ujjwalg• 17 years ago

In short: no Mac required for developing iPhone apps. flash games which are extremely easy/quick to develop can be ported into iphone apps.

Conclusion: iPhone app development prices will go down the drain for most of the apps. There will be millions of apps on the appstore. Prices of apps will go down further.

WOW!!!

elai2• 17 years ago

.99 is the minimum you can go, so iphone apps wont get cheaper. Flash games tend to run really slow even with beafy core 2 duos, so I'm wondering if the performance will translate for smartphones.

cakesy3• 17 years ago

I guess you didn't watch the video? The apps appeared quite snazzy, I am sure they used open gl es for them, so there is no reason they should be.

I hate flash, but I hate dealing with open gl even more. Maybe I will have to look into this.

georgekv• 17 years ago

While development costs may drop, it's hard for most app prices to drop any further as Apple has set the price floor at $0.99 cents.

axod• 17 years ago

Free + email harvesting/advertising/spam?

davidalln• 17 years ago

Perhaps, but I think this is too cynical. You forget about the cost of Flash (assuming you're being legit), the cost of being able to put up stuff on the App Store, how potentially difficult it is to adapt the application to the iPhone, and how annoyingly stringy Apple is about bugs. This will surly shoo away a large amount of amateur Flash-ists.

Plus, you're forgetting that the market is already diluted. The only apps that make it are those which get advertised heavily or a big blog discovers and writes about it. Therefore, these "million of apps" will hardly make a difference in how difficult it is to make significant money developing iPhone apps.

The App Store is not going to become Newgrounds, I promise.

Zev4• 17 years ago

In short: no Mac required for developing iPhone apps. flash games which are extremely easy/quick to develop can be ported into iphone apps.

Remains to be seen. You still have to sign applications to submit them to the app store. Adobe hasn't made it clear if they reverse engineered this bit yet, or if it simply calls the codesign binary. If its the latter, you still need a Mac.

netsp3• 17 years ago

I'm not sure I really get this sort of comment. Is a mac really such a hurdle relative time, effort or monetary cost?

MatthewFabb• 17 years ago

Nope, you can actually develop using just Windows. From Adobe's Ryan Stewart tweets: http://twitter.com/ryanstewart/statuses/4636390111 "One of the biggest things about the Flash/iPhone news is that you no longer need a Mac to build iPhone apps."

http://twitter.com/bit101/status/4636544212 "@ryanstewart really? so it uses your cert and provision and creates the .app file? no xcode needed?"

http://twitter.com/ryanstewart/statuses/4636642995 "@bit101 Yup, no Xcode needed."

absconditus• 17 years ago

Flash Professional CS isn't exactly cheap.

chrischen• 17 years ago

iPhone apps probably won't go down that much. You'll still have to pay at least $0.99 for those apps you'd get on the internet for free, and this is because you're getting the app on a closed, mobile platform that runs in the palm of your hands. Then there's the $99 fee to get it into the app store, which is part of the closed platform problem.

rimantas• 17 years ago

Will it work as well as Flash now works on OS X? If so, then thanks, but no thanks.

cakesy3• 17 years ago

Well, you could watch the video. Seems to work pretty well.

I hate flash, but compiled flash might just be ok.

mattyb• 17 years ago

Wow, so owning a Mac will no longer be a requirement for iPhone development, as Flash Professional supports Windows also. Even MonoTouch requires an Intel Mac.

allenp3• 17 years ago

This would be pretty great - but I'm not sure what Adobe has planned for signing the app (and if they can take any of the pain out of that process it would really make life a lot easier).

allenp3• 17 years ago

So a few questions in my mind - what does this do to wait times for getting apps into the store? How much stricter is Apple going to be on non-conforming UI? I really think Apple will impose artificial controls on the market to prevent it from bottoming out and flooding their top tier producers - or perhaps finally make a AAA section for the store.

scotth2• 17 years ago

Do you think Apple would take issue with making Flash controls look identical to their own?

wmf• 17 years ago

IIRC there was an issue about an Aqua PLAF for Swing years ago.

bdittmer• 17 years ago

Did no one else anticipate this? Lots of other people have been doing this for awhile (mono foundation, unity, gambit scheme, etc.). Is this a game changer? Yes. It opens up the door to tons of developers. Will applications written in actionscript still have the same shortcomings as the other aforementioned languages? Probably. Looking at the AS apps in the store right now they all have larger than expected file sizes. Additionally I don't see any of them taking advantage of any of the latest API features rolled out in iPhoneOS v3. Each time Apple releases a new iPhone OS version (with all of the API changes/additions) all of these tools need to be updated and re-released. Moral of the story? If you want to take advantage of the latest API features and remain on the cutting edge of iPhone development it's best to stick with objective-c.

9oliYQjP• 17 years ago

Before everyone gets too excited over this, admittedly very cool technical achievement, how will this affect the look and feel of apps making use of it? Games always tend to use completely custom UIs, so this will be a neat tool at the disposal of game devs. But how will business apps feel? Will text boxes be CocoaTouch-based or some Adobe-proprietary text box?

These things tend to matter in achieving a consistent look and feel to users. I've never preferred Java apps on either Windows or Mac OS X to native ones, primarily because they are only ever 95% of the way there in providing consistent look and feel. There's always something that is just off ever so slightly.

alex_c• 17 years ago

Even if CS5 won't include it at launch, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there will be a full-fledged library of "iPhone-like" controls available.

Besides, Apple can be as anal as they want about interface consistency before they approve something to the App Store, and they're probably not thrilled by this. They can use the interface excuse to great effect if they choose, to neutralize the effectiveness of this tool by simply rejecting many Flash apps.

smhinsey• 17 years ago

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft reacts to this. I am in the early stages of planning an application that might have a rich client component. Since the rest of the stack is .NET, it made a lot of sense to look at Silverlight, but now that I could potentially deploy the same code to an iPhone (and probably other mobile platforms as well) with minimal extra effort, it's hard to recommend Silverlight.

elai2• 17 years ago

Unity uses a .NET runtime for it's code, you might be able to port it over.

scotth2• 17 years ago

Check out MonoTouch: http://monotouch.net/

It precompiles .NET code into ARM binaries for the iPhone.

guelo• 17 years ago

So after all of my investment and time learning the Cocoa Touch platform these flash guys come in with 10+ years of crappy code and inundate the app store without even having to reference count their objects. There goes my consulting business :(

If it's been hard getting noticed in the app store imagine what it's going to be like when every flash app in the world is ported over.

wensing• 17 years ago

This makes us at Stormpulse really happy, since our map is written in ActionScript, and people have been screaming for an iPhone app.

nirmal• 17 years ago

I sure hope IndestructoTank is ported right away. One of my favorite games and I think it us well suited to iPhone gaming.

radley• 17 years ago

sitting in multi-touch session at AdobeMAX... yes, for iPhone. Will check out the AIR session (for "mobile") on Wed.

A lot of sessions that were titled "for Mobile" have changed to "for iPhone": http://arno.org/arnotify/2009/10/max-2009-adobe-air-2-0-and-...

zhyder• 17 years ago

The FAQ is pretty informative: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Applications_for_iPhone...

I especially found this useful:

<quote>Which native iPhone APIs and functionality are supported when using Flash tooling?

The following native device APIs and functionality are supported:

- MultiTouch

- Screen Orientation

- Saving images to Photo Library

- Accelerometer

- Geo-location

- Cut / Copy / Paste

Can applications take advantage of hardware acceleration?

Yes. In some cases, the rendering of Flash content will be hardware accelerated.

We will publish more information on this when we release the public beta.</unquote>

senthilnayagam• 17 years ago

I doubt if people can build apps on windows "yet" until there is official blessings from Apple itself

application signing and testing on iphone simulator, phone provisioning and developer profile for iphone, debugging, profiling all need a mac, xcode and friends

the machine shown on the video was a mac

timdorr• 17 years ago

I think the biggest thing people are missing here is one of the best advantages: Demos!

Currently Apple doesn't give a way to distribute demo copies of software. But if your app is already a Flash project, you can export that to the web in a trial form for people to play and test out. We've had videos and screenshots, but this is a much more effective way of selling.

Check out an example: http://www.muchosmedia.com/justletters/ All you've got to do to build a demo is export to SWF instead of IPA. Easy cheezy.

neovive• 17 years ago

This is a significant development and seems to be win-win for both Adobe and Apple. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out and if iPhone App development in Windows/Flash is as seamless as Adobe is claiming. But if it is, along with the support for RTMP, Remote Shared Objects, AMF, and SQLLite, it could be a big boost for Adobe.

Flash Professional CS5 will build native iPhone and iPod Touch applications

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