So I am sure you have all heard of the heated debate regarding Adobe Flash for mobile phones by now (see Apple’s homepage for Steve Job’s jabs at Flash). I think it is safe to say we won’t see Flash on the iPhone anytime soon…
But, forget about the iPhone – what about everyone else!? Adobe has presumably been working on a mobile-compatible version of Flash for years! As a Palm Pre user, I have been hearing rumors and seeing demos since last year. Adobe engineers have made references to Palm’s webOS to be the first mobile OS with Flash. Moreover, Palm’s CEO, Jon Rubinstein, promised in March 2010 at the Game Developer’s Conference that Flash would be available in the first-half of 2010 – with a beta version coming much before that.
Well… we’re only about a month from the first half of 2010, and no beta version… no new rumors… nothing. And to make the situation even worse, Google swoops in with their new dessert (froyo – version 2.2) and will now be the first mobile OS to support Adobe Flash (mentioned last week at the Google IO in San Francisco).
Sure, this is a great accomplishment for Google… but I am still bitter. From my point of view, there are two things that come from this announcement:
1. Palm’s list of “Missed Opportunities” just grew
2. Google’s list of “Who Needs Quality Control When You’ve Got…” just added yet another version of the OS.
Its sufficient to say that neither one of those is a good thing. Come on Palm & Google – let’s lock it up!