Getting sick of all the talk about Flash I emailed Mark Doherty who is the Platform Evangelist - Mobile and Devices WW at Adobe Systems. Below is my email to him and his response:
My Email:
Mark,
All of us in the WebOS world have seen the many demo videos of Flash on the Pre (like on your blog) but we were told that the plugin was supposed to be available in December of 2009. There's not even the beta that was promised to us available. With the launch of the iPad and more sites using HTML 5 I would have to believe that this project is dead.
There's also this
article in the Examiner:
"Things just suck for Adobe these days. Not only will Apple's refusal of Flash technology hurt their business, but they can't seem to get a proper plugin for the Palm Pre and webOS, which has been promised for months now. We are told that the plugin that was supposed to be available in December, then January, then February, then March and then April won't be available in the near future.
Adobe can make up any excuses they want. The fact is that Flash technology is way too buggy for mobile devices. The few developers who had access to Flash on the Pre have said that it not only eats away battery life very fast, but often causes the Pre to do a complete reset.
Los Angeles industry analyst Paul Mueller thinks that Adobe Flash will be just like Mariah Carey in another year: irrelevant and replaced. Other technologies such as HTML 5 are replacing Flash on different websites. You have to give Adobe credit though: Flash was fun while it lasted."
So can someone at Adobe just be honest and tell us the truth?
Thanks,
Dave
Mark's Response:
Hi Dave,
Darly’s article is somewhat misleading – Palm are required to pass our certification tests and we are actively encouraging them to meet that strict criteria. The integration of a technology like Flash isn’t a simple process, but they are close and I think it will be one of the best implementations around.
Copied here is Antonio Flores, one of our Product Managers for mobile and devices. It may be possible for him to swing you onto an upcoming pre-release for WebOS.
@Antonio – can you help with this?
Thanks,
Mark
**Update**
4/13/10 4:55PM PST
Antonio Flores Replies:
Hi Dave,
As Mark indicated, we’re holding Palm to strict ship criteria but they are close. We expect that a public beta should occur in a similar timeframe to that of Android – May/June. At this time, we’re not doing a wider pre-release program.
Regards,
Antonio