Mehmet Alpsoy

Ok, this is not a fresh news which you hear from me. Besides I really don’t aim to announce that. I want to write about the iPhone Packager which is almost the only thing that many Flash Platform Developers expect from the new Flash. I will be talking about some concerns as we all are smiling after AdobeMAX 2009, and the positive sides are more than negatives. But…

First of all, it is good to see Actionscript based applications on iPhone, and Flash will be the strongest (media) platform ever. But many Objective-C guys will not be happy with that (as it is very painful to adapt that language if you are a Flash guy) as they were the only people who managed to build applications and make money (yes, money is the main thing that we build applications for). But here is the fact, they are actually right. Because in my opinion Apples’s AppStore will be a kind of junkyard after the public release of Flash CS5 as there are lots of Flash Developers (or people tend to be) out there. There will be a lot of silly games that are decompiled and graphically changed, and uploaded to AppStore, probably not free. This example should seem the ethic part of the story, and may be it is not that suitable, but I think you understand what I mean.

Also we will see more topics on Acrionscript forums than ever about iPhone Applications (come on, we all have seen a topic which says “I have just started to learn Actionscript yesterday and I want to build a Flash game, help me -this means send me the full source code-” once), also people who don’t know Objective-C or Actionscript will try to build applications with Actionscript because the Flash community is bigger than the XCode one, and there are more sources about Flash over the internet.

I think Apple shouldn’t have behaved stubborn about a native Flash Player on iPhone with browser support, as Adobe Engineers are way smarter than they imagine. So everything would stay clean, and there would be a difference between a native iPhone application and plug-in based application. Also the experience that Flash Player would bring to iPhone would keep hands of Apple stronger than ever.

So what now? Apple should really think about what to do to keep AppStore clean. Also the release of Flash CS5 will be the funeral of Objective-C for iPhone and many Objective-C Developers will only build applications for MAC OS X again. This is the awful truth.

One last thing. It is sad to find out that Flash Platform world is concentrated on iPhone Development as Flash Platform means more than that for me as the future of Flash is going to be brighter than ever in a couple of years. Also making money from a silly game will not make a Flash Developer’s career adorable, and money doesn’t last forever.

These concerns may seem meaningless now, and the Flash on iPhone may seem as a victory. But discovery of nuclear science was a victory too, until the cold war. And to be honest I will be developing applications for iPhone with Actionscript after the release of Flash CS5, (’cause I will be developing 5x apps with Actionscript than Objective-C), and leave Objective-C as a memory. Should I uninstall XCode now?

P.S : I live in Istanbul, and I am hearing from many digital agencies and know that people at these agencies are waiting for the release in greed, and they will exhaust the iPhone AppStore to make more money than ever, as most of the iPhone Applications built in Turkey are developed by software companies, and the big slice of share are going to these software companies. God save AppStore!

P.S. 2 : A topic with 8 popular tags from my blog? Nice one…

Last week I have attended the certificated “FLEX Builder 3 training with Sven Claar” at Medyasoft.

The training lasted 4 days, covered Flex Builder, Flex SDK, LiveCycle ES, AIR, FLEX Charting and more.

It helped me to put extra knowledge over mine and I ‘ve learned lots of tips and techniques which will hopefully make me a better Flex Developer.

Also it was nice to see that I have done things in the way they have to be, and see some which have not to be

This week I started to build two FLEX/AIR projects. One for the agency I work, and one for myself. Hope to share it with people soon.

Finally, I want to Thank Sven for his patiently given answers for my questions, and the things I’ ve learned.