O’Reilly: Inside RIA

Now that we have already had the Flash on the iPad discussion, let's take a different look in discussing the iPad. (Please don't start the Flash iPad flame war again) Will you buy one and if so why? Would...

Is the iPad *really* the future of the web? Some people seem to be eating up the hype, and hanging onto every statement that Apple makes, but I'm not convinced. There are a lot of features of the iPad that leave me scratching my head, but in this post I want to talk about the lack of plug-in support.

Adobe, a long time player in rich internet applications wants be an active participant on mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Adobe engineers put their minds together and delivered a solution to work around the problem of the iPhone browser's lack of support for Flash. If the iPhone Safari browser will not support the Flash player, let's use the Flash tools to compile a native iPhone application (ipa) which lives directly on the device. This initiative now gives the opportunity for ActionScript developers to develop applications for the wonderful iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Adobe have spent a lot of cycles / years nudging Apple that Flash should be on the iPhone. Apple have firmly just said no, and despite the answer, Adobe keep expecting them to cave due to public demand. The problem with this logic is that Apple won't give in. Let's break this down into two parts: First, Don't poke the sleeping giant. Secondly, just because it's easy, doesn't mean its successful.

We sat down with Chris Griffith and Kevin Schmidt to discuss the big MAX announcements and give our take on what they mean. Topics covered include: Flash for the iPhone, Flash 10.1 on mobile, TVs, and netbooks.

Inside RIA's Rich Tretola reports on a treasure trove of links. Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.

So it's finally happened, and deep down, we all knew it was coming...the 3G iPhone was announced at the Apple WWDC keynote this morning. Among the new features confirmed today, Steve Jobs also announced that the new iPhone will feature built-in GPS, as well as a more robust iPhone developer SDK including access to powerful development tools such as Cocoa Touch, their development framework for building applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.