Thanks so much for the feedback above. I am responsible for the Social Media activity in eircom so it’s great to hear the Twitter comments in your blog.

It’s not so great to hear your customer experience and I will be sending a link to your blog to several people internally here in eircom so we can live, learn & improve from it! I’d like to apologise for the inconvenience caused. I’ve left my email address in the section above should you wish to contact me further.

I’ll pass your Twitter compliment onto the eircomconnect team.

Thanks again,
Georgina

What about free Flash games on ad supported websites?

I like the results Flash gives, but it isn’t really a cross-platform solution if the player software isn’t optimized for the device.

Without knowing the application, how can you say it’s cpu inefficient? There are many badly written apps that are made using xcode. Deny apps from the App store on an app by app basis. Allow flash; if it is slow and inefficient people will stop using it.

Also, even if you use xcode, you don’t have access to “all the low level system stuff”, Apple has held back some of their APIs from the sdk.

The Adobe Flash output to iPhone option is a hack, but that’s because Apple have locked down the iPhone OS. If Apple released a spec for Mac OSX on the iPhone it would be less of a hack, like Adobe have done for the Flash player.

Speaking of hacks, why do people jailbreak their phones? No-one jailbreaks an Android phone because it’s for the most part an open system and therefore there is no need. People jailbreak iPhones for the simple reason that the closed Apple system is broken and if you are spending a lot of money on device people want to run the apps they want to run, not the ones Apple would like you to run.

@Ken Berger
Yes, I have used an Android phone. I have a HTC Hero. There is no Android UI. There is a default Google UI, but because it is an open system companies can customize the UI. For example, HTC have Sense.

In the upcoming AIR SDK native code integration is supported.

Apple still make money from free apps, there is the $99 developer fee and when the new iAd mobile platform, they’ll make even more money from free apps.

Bottom line: Steve Jobs (not Apple) is unwilling to work with Adobe. The iPhone has INCREDIBLE potential that will remain untapped because of politics. Damn shame!

Flash 10.1 in testing outperforms everything else out there (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhPrJJN6PDs).

ALL apps have to go through the app store period. (Unless your iPhone/touch is jailbroken of course). This was true in the past even if you used Adobes tools to make the app, so nothing has changed there.

Adobe provided a tool to cross-compile Flash movies into iPhone compliant apps. In simple terms, the Adobe tool used a bit of code attached to the Flash movie that made it appear as a native iPhone app. Apple has locked Adobe (whaa whaa) out of this cross-compiling hack, because, well… its a hack! and it’s CPU inefficient. If you build with Apples tools, you not have a more efficient app you also have access to all the low level system stuff …. you should pop over to roughlydrafted.com and gain some insight.

You have to understand that iPhoneOS is a *superset* of Mac OSX. Why then, given Adobe’s dismal record on the Mac would SJobs allow Flash on the iPhone?

In fact, the iPhone is ONLY one platform. Why all this bully & bluster from Adobe?

One reason: The Adobe emperor has no clothes. And SJobs just made this little.not.so.secret. of Silicon Valley public. All Adobe has now is bluster. And little else.

If you don’t believe me, just see if they can release anything of worth on the other mobile platforms. Nothing yet, and I don’t expect to see anything to change my opinion.

-Drunky

Why should I buy apps from someone who will make my chosen platform no better than any others? Why should I wait for Adobe to add new features only when they finally appear on everything?

Why should use a monolithic executable instead of JavaScript that I can write in a text editor?

I like native apps, web sites designed for desktops are harder to use and uglier and take longer to do things. I say the sooner Adobe improves their HTML 5 output the better.

And this is the main reason that Flash based apps will never be on the iPhone they are by definition lowest common denominator applications, they can not use OS specific functions and still be cross platform.

It is not about money – i.e. Apple does want you to get your apps from the App store but the majority of apps are free and Apple does not make any money on them. But it does allow Apple to maintain the quality and integrity of the iPhone and keep Malware off it.

And Adobe does provide poor support for non windows environments – inlcuding the Mac and all mobile platforms. Adobe was to have full flash for smart phones more than a year ago, they only now released a beta for Android. And when your new Android phone runes out of battery in under an hour lets see how much you like flash and the extra features then? Not to mention how much Flash slows down your Mac!

Flash is like the floppy disk it will not be used in a few years. Look at the adoption of non Flash video on the web, up from 10% to15 % a few months ago to more than 30% now!