“Let Them Eat Cake” and/or the Gift that Keeps On Giving?
It’s been a while. A few small projects have jumped up here and there and I’ve been busy redoing my own site. Please excuse the mess. I’m at a stage now where I like having it both up and under construction at the same time. It may be a while before I get around to finishing things up completely (separate style sheet for the iPad). I have a lot of galleries to tend to and will be in fairly substantial trouble if I get busy with other things — having put stuff up while only partially complete.
Much has happened in the feud, war, imbroglio or whatever between Apple and Adobe since my last post. I hesitate to use the word amazing, but it does seem appropriate. This morning NPR mentioned that the Feds are getting involved. It would be good, I think, for a few enlightening rays of sunshine to find some way into the story. That may be what the Federal government can provide. On the other hand I hate to see things come down to Federal investigations and the lawsuits that often ensue thereafter.
Since my last post, the Wall Street Journal has reported that modifications to the Apple OS, made by Apple, are likely responsible for many of the problems that Apple users are encountering with Flash; Apple, in an out-of-nowhere unilateral swipe has excluded Flash developers from the iPhone/iPad platform via language in the developer’s agreement; Google has responded by jumping right into bed with all of the spurned Flash developers (May 20th should be an exciting day as the Flash – Android marriage is formally announced); Apple has patented pretty much every conceivable hand gesture; Steve Jobs penned a really long letter about Flash; Microsoft has canned the Courier; HP has dropped the Slate and picked up Palm; Adobe’s top Flash evangelist has used the “screw” word in formal reference to Apple; Adobe has released CS5; and now rumors of the Federal inquiry into Apple. Wow. These are exciting times. I’m thinking that Adobe has the upper hand at present, but it all is starting to look like a lengthy prize fight where the lead changes every other round and both combatants leave in worse shape than they began.
My guess remains that Microsoft’s acceptance of HTML5, or not, is extremely important. Also how well Flash runs on Android matters enormously. If it runs well, Google could walk away with a majority share of a huge market that they casually stumbled upon. The largest LinkedIn group of Flash developers is around 8,000 strong. The total membership of all of the Flash and Flex development groups is around 45,000. By whatever measure, there are a lot of independent developers just being handed over to Google and whichever platforms accept Flash. Google’s Android is reported to be approaching 50,000 apps by the speculated May-20th wedding. Quite the dowry. Who knows what will happen next. This is all a lot of fun to watch — back to the boxing metaphor.
Meanwhile, I’ve begun wrestling with Drupal. I’m also becoming immersed in CS5. Oh so much fun. Illustrator is, once again, the champion. The Dreamweaver introspection and Photoshop content-aware features appear to work well. I’ll leave the details and thoughts on the rest of the suite for another post.