Flash Player 10.1 on Google TV
I posted over on the Flash Platform blog over work we've been doing to bring Flash Player 10.1 to the Google TV.
Adobe and Google are working closely together on a number of different efforts including support for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR across various platforms and devices. One of these new platforms is Google TV, Google's new Android based platform that brings the power of the web in to the living room. Google TV includes Flash Player 10.1 integrated directly into the Google Chrome browser delivering the full Web to consumers on their television sets. The digital home is a huge step for Flash and it represents an amazing new screen for developers and content creators to bring rich interactive content to the TV.
With support for Flash Player 10.1, Google TV customers have access to the full web. This includes the approximately 75% of online videos and web games that use Flash, the vast numbers of rich Internet applications, and content across social networks. Flash Player 10.1 will support hardware-accelerated video playback and deliver smooth, HD (1080p) quality video on Google TV devices. We're excited that having Flash Player 10.1 as a key part of Google TV will enable an additional screen for the more than 3 million Flash developers to create content for.
We are seeing widespread interest from our partners in the digital home space and we are working closely with them to include support for Flash. Today, consumers can experience rich Flash-based applications, content and user interfaces in televisions, set-top boxes, and Blu-ray players from Samsung, Vizio, Haier, BestBuy Insignia, and Tivo. Game consoles such as Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 also feature Flash technology.
Want to see it in action? Check out this video we shot on site at the Googleplex showing Flash Player running on Google TV.
New Year, New Job (Same Adobe!)
What's a better way to start a new year than a new job? In January, I moved over from our AIR group, where I was doing iPhone stuff, to our Digital Home group, helping to bring Flash in to the Digital Home and connected living room segment.
I've had an amazing time working to bring AIR to the iPhone (and now the iPad!). It was a very unique opportunity to work within the company on a small, motivated, focused and talented team to bring out what was effectively a secret project and launch it at MAX. With the CS5 launch right around the corner, it's super-exciting to see the technology ship in Flash (apparently our team is in the credits!) and get developers access to what we've been working on.
It's a very exciting change and I've been having a blast these last three months working in the new team. We've been working hard to build out our strategy and get all the pieces in place to really execute and bring out a whole new set of TV experiences over the next few years. Having spent the last few weeks traveling and talking to customers it's amazing what kind of innovation will happen in this space in the next few years. Hardware specs in TVs, Bluray Players, and set top boxes are growing rapidly which will enable content creators and developers to unlock the TV in ways we haven't seen before. To give you some flavor of this, we're seeing a quick move in the industry from 300MHz CPUs last year up to nearly GHz CPUs in the next 6-18 months.
So what is Adobe doing in the Digital Home space? Well, there's some stuff that's pretty obvious, some stuff we've shipped, and some stuff I can't mention just yet. I'm lucky enough to be working with a team that has the first release under their belt which is a Flash Lite 3.1 based runtime optimized for TV-style devices. We've got a ton of customers building content and others shipping that content on their devices. As we go in to the year we'll see a lot more devices ship with Flash. Plus, we're hard at work on the next version of our runtime and our software solution (hint: it's a lot like we've done for mobile web browsing). But more details on that later!
BTW: I'll be at NAB next week in Las Vegas if anybody is there and wants to chat about what Adobe is doing in this space. DM me @hyperionab. I'm also presenting at the theater in the Adobe booth Tuesday at 230pm in the Las Vegas Convention Center, giving a talk entitled "Extending the Adobe Flash Platform Across Screens". It'll also be on Adobe TV if you missed it and wanted to see it.
Requesting Access To the Flash CS5 Beta
We've been posting in a few places how to get access to the Flash CS5 private beta program. This whole iPad thing has gotten people really excited, so folks have been emailing our iphone-prerelease@adobe.com address in order to request access. Here's a screenshot of my inbox getting flooded with the access requests. Much love to the Flash community!
Flash iPhone Apps and the iPad
If you were anywhere near tech news today, you probably noticed Apple announced the iPad. I don't fully get it, but hey -- they're Apple and they'll probably sell a few million of them.
The cool thing for iPhone developers is that their iPhone apps run out of the box on the iPad. The iPad is 1024x768 device that runs an "Apple A4" processor. What this means to iPhone developers is their UIs will be by default upscaled by 2x from their native 480x320 to 960x640. I'm going to assume there will be some unused areas of the screen since the aspect ratios don't match up between the two devices.
The processor, an Apple A4 is a new beast that has no mention prior. I'm going to venture a guess here that it's an ARM core, probably Cortex A8 or Cortex A9, built with some of the IP they acquired from P.A. Semi.
Since they're running iPhone / iPod touch apps which are ARM binaries, it's unlikely they're running an emulation layer of any sort, and just running the apps straight on the A4 core.
What does this mean for Flash app built with the Packager for iPhone? It means more devices and faster processors! We'll be working to ensure that our packager works to enable developers to target the new iPad device. Even today, apps that are already in the App Store built with the Flash Platform should be supported.
My colleague Michael Chou has posted additional information on the Flash Platform blog. Also, Christian Cantrell has posted a great article on authoring for multiple screen sizes that went live today.
Sprint Backlog Task: Ice Cream
One of the many, many reasons I love working on software is how whimsical it can sometimes be. I was reviewing a sprint backlog for one of the scrum teams that work on the Distribution Service and came across this sprint item.
Building software is most of the time super stressful but I love when people find a way to add some funny in to the mix. Remember, getting the ice cream comes before updating the production server.
P.S. This backlog item reminds me of a similar story when I was working in China. One of our developers in China was reading a set up document written by a developer in the states. One of the steps read "install Windows Server", and the step right after that said to "Enjoy a Dr Pepper" since the installation would take a while. Our dev had no idea what that meant and of course Baidu nor Google were of any help. In the end, he ended up having to ask his manager what that step meant.
AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 Betas
Today we made available the betas for Flash Player 10.1 (on the desktop) and AIR 2. While there's a ton of features in both runtimes, one of the things that's coolest to me is the shared work that's gone in to the core of the "Flash runtime". Across both runtimes, apps will use less memory and consume fewer CPU cycles just by the nature of the work that's gone in to the runtime.
Since the cores are the same between Flash Player and AIR both runtimes benefit from the shared work. All this matters even more as we bring the Flash Platform to mobile devices (esp memory and CPU). Plus, features like the global exception handler (something the community has wanted for years, as I understand it) get exposed in the browser and in the desktop.
On the features side, I'm most excited about the support in Flash Player for hardware decoding of H.264 videos on Windows. The demo that our CTO showed at MAX had Hulu HD running on a netbook sipping CPU. On the AIR side it's a tossup between the new networking features and the new native process APIs. My coworker, Rob, has a full write up at Logged In in the Adobe Developer Connection, so head there to learn more.
Needless to say, congrats to the teams and send us your feedback!
Slides from Flash Apps on iPhone Session at MAX
I've uploaded from the slides from my presentation at MAX, "Building Applications for iPhone using Flash Pro CS5". The slides and the talk cover some of the new capabilities we're bringing to Flash Pro CS5 to allow developers to create native iPhone applications using ActionScript 3.0.
The talk is archived in two places. First, if you want the full experience with slides, video, audio and queue points check out the MAX 2009 archive. The archive is fantastic. It's free, not geo-locked, and comprehensive. It's almost as good as being at MAX in person. Second, if you just want the slides and voice over you can see it at Adobe TV.
Buliding Applications for iPhone with Flash Pro CS5
Opening the iPhone to Flash Developers
So wraps up a crazy hectic day today, where we announced that we were making available in Flash Pro CS5 the ability to create a native iPhone application. For those who know me, this has been my all consuming, all encompassing life for a long time now. We ran the project in super secret mode and I'm so excited as of today to be able to share it with everybody.
As expected, this has been huge news in the community and we're really happy to see people getting as happy about it as we were building the product. Flash is still a trending topic on Twitter, 14 hours later.
As of today, seven applications are available in the Apple App Store for download that were built using this technology. For more info on how it all works, you can also read my article on Adobe Developer Connection. In a nut shell, we build native iPhone applications by compiling your ActionScript to native ARM assembly.
So, check out some of the apps, sign up for the beta, or visit adobe.com/go/iphone for more information. It's finally time to hit the hay here in LA and wake up to the next day of Adobe MAX 2009 (or as we're calling it, the "bestmaxevar").
Flash Platform Services
We announced today the availability of a new set of Flash Platform Services, namely the Distribution service. There's really no feeling like shipping software and I'm super excited to have this product out the door. The Distribution service, as a whole, allows publishers distribute content on the web, social networks and mobile devices. We heard time and time again that our customers love Flash, but getting their content seen and used was one of the biggest challenges they faced, both on the web and on mobile devices.
My team specifically worked on building the service that allows distribution to mobile phones. From a web app, a user can type in their mobile number and receive an SMS that allows them to install a platform specific version of their application. We made it easy to drive mobile experiences that compliment publishers web experiences. It's awesome.
Like all new products and even more so version one software, getting from concept to development to deployment and the sales cycle along the way is a tough but rewarding process. I want to congratulate the team for a fantastic job of shepherding the product though the stages and for shipping a great piece of software. There's been really good coverage on the product, too. You can check out TechCrunch and The Register for their articles.