schematic

Regardless of what team you root for – Apple changing the rules (of the developer program license) mid game, is extremely short sighted and poor form (at a number of levels). How any company can expect developers to fully commit to a platform, where the fundamental rules, are subject to change so swiftly, with such feeble justification, is beyond me.

An interesting side-note from all of the Apple-Adobe carry-on, is the focusing of the spotlight on Adobe’s mobile Flash (development) platform and where it’s heading.

I think it’s great that Adobe have been able to bounce back so quickly and change the focus of a negative situation, into something positive.

One thing people seem to have missed, is that this is not Adobe’s first negative experience in the mobile space. Those of you who have been working with Flash for a number of years might recall their last foray(s) into the mobile market – FlashLite and FlashCast.

So given Adobe’s track record in this space, why should anything be different now, just because we have some shiney new mobile devices to (potentially) run Flash on?

Don’t get me wrong, I think Adobe’s focus on the new Android (and Windows) based mobile devices shows an enthusiastic tenacity, and i’m certainly not dis’ing Flash on mobile devices in general. What concerns me, is that I don’t think Adobe has adequately addressed/learned from their past failures with FlashLite and FlashCast. Which IMO, is critical for them to move forward with a fresh new start.

More specifically, they need to work hard on restoring their (mobile) credibility with burnt FlashLite and FlashCast developers who eagerly championed Flash on mobile devices in times gone by. Only to be thrown to the curb when (for whatever reason) Adobe decided they didn’t want to play that game any more. The funny thing is, that it’s highly likely, that a large portion of these FlashLite/FlashCast developers, will potentially be the developers championing Flash development on the new Android devices.

That being the case, how/why is this time going to be different to the past?