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This makes an interesting thought experiment: what if Adobe decides to take on Apple directly by throwing their weight behind Apple's main competitor, Android.

This makes an interesting thought experiment: what if Adobe decides to take on Apple directly by throwing their weight behind Apple's main competitor, Android. CS5.1 is shipped as a free upgrade to CS5 and replaces the iPhone-compiler with an Android-compiler. Organizations with existing Flash content decide that they had might as well do a quick/dirty port of their apps using CS5.1. What will the results of this be? * Lots of Flash content gets released on Android. This expands Android's software market considerably, though with a cost in performance/platform-integration (both in terms of UI and in terms of taking advantage of low-level capabilities). * Many of the best/most popular and money-making Flash apps will get an iPhone OS-native port. The cost to write an iPhone app is relatively low; if you're talking about a game, the vast majority of the cost is usually in the assets. The iPhone developer tools are very good, there are lots of developers: finding an iPhone developer willing to make a native port of your game engine isn't difficult or expensive relative to the number of users you open up your investment to. Thus iPhone potentially gets the best version of many originally-Flash apps. Thus, Android continues to have more possibilities (theoretical and, in some cases, actual), but a lower overall level of quality, integration, and performance... an issue its apps are already widely accused of. And iPhone, which has a tremendous lead in number of apps, loses out on a few — again, a fairly unpopular set which would have generally not fit in on the platform as well and would have slowed Apple's ability to require adoption of new platform capabilities. It's hard to see the downside to Apple here. And it's hard to see how this does anything but make Android less attractive and iPhone more attractive for most mainstream (the overwhelming majority) users.

wvenable 17y ago
It depends. Lets say that Adobe's compiler allows Zynga to quickly port FarmVille to Android as a native app. There are 82.4 million FarmVille users who, like crack addicts, always need their fix. They might just buy an Android phone for FarmVille and all the other games they play daily. Now Zyngna does as you said and hires someone to build an iPhone OS native version. It'll come out 6 months to a year later -- but it's there. Then what happens? FarmVille is always being updated. It's easy to update the Android version but iPhone version always requires more work. So inevitably it falls behind or stops working entirely. Is that really more attractive for mainstream users?
usaar333 17y ago
I agree that it makes android a lot larger; however, I feel you underestimate the cost to make an iPhone app. Also, I feel you are underestimating the 'theoertical possibilities'. I have a custom keyboard (swype) that allows me to "type" extremely fast. On my computer, I use Chrome; it integrates poorly with KDE's UI, but since it is so damn fast compared to firefox, I use it. Finally, a quality loss is very debatable for cross-compiled apps. Polarbit (http://polarbit.com/ http://polarbit.com/) cross compiles to iphone, android and Symbian and their apps are quite good. Performance might not be such a big deal either - high-end Android phones spec-wise are significantly better than the 3GS; this advantage should make up for slower apps.

wvenable 17y ago

It depends. Lets say that Adobe's compiler allows Zynga to quickly port FarmVille to Android as a native app. There are 82.4 million FarmVille users who, like crack addicts, always need their fix. They might just buy an Android phone for FarmVille and all the other games they play daily. Now Zyngna does as you said and hires someone to build an iPhone OS native version. It'll come out 6 months to a year later -- but it's there. Then what happens? FarmVille is always being updated. It's easy to update the Android version but iPhone version always requires more work. So inevitably it falls behind or stops working entirely. Is that really more attractive for mainstream users?

usaar333 17y ago

I agree that it makes android a lot larger; however, I feel you underestimate the cost to make an iPhone app. Also, I feel you are underestimating the 'theoertical possibilities'. I have a custom keyboard (swype) that allows me to "type" extremely fast. On my computer, I use Chrome; it integrates poorly with KDE's UI, but since it is so damn fast compared to firefox, I use it. Finally, a quality loss is very debatable for cross-compiled apps. Polarbit (http://polarbit.com/ http://polarbit.com/) cross compiles to iphone, android and Symbian and their apps are quite good. Performance might not be such a big deal either - high-end Android phones spec-wise are significantly better than the 3GS; this advantage should make up for slower apps.