Does iPhone4′s 300 dpi screen and HTML5 over flash, mean the end for Adobe software?
I think we are all aware that Apple are one of those companies that try to make the curve, rather than follow it. With new technologies on the market like smart phones, touch screen technology and electronic notepads like the iPad, Apple do tend to try new things, which people love and then they take off. Most of these technologies have already been around for years, but no one tries to bring it to the consumer in a successful way like Apple seems to do and they do it well.
With the release of iPhone 4 and iPad, there has been a lot of debate and even outrage over the lack of flash being allowed to run on the systems, even though they could easily run the software. Steve Jobs tells us this is because HTML5 is the way forward and flash’s buggy api’s make it a bad experience to use. I agree to to a point, but i’m started to notice another possible reason for keeping flash out of the game…
To date, we are told HTML5 is the future, but I use HTML and Flash day in and day out, and there is still no way of ‘graphically’ building a game or animation using HTML5, because it’s all built at the coding level. Designers like myself can not design something we can not see, so with no alternative to flash, why would HTML5 be the future?
As a graphic designer, I’m used to using software to export things for print and online, with certain rules i’m meant to follow such as CMYK over RGB and 300 dpi over 72.
With iPhone 4 being released as the new generation of internet ready mobile devices using a 300 dpi display, this kind of changes the rules slightly. Now I would need to export all my images for web and print at 300 dpi, but it doesn’t stop there.
Look at Microsoft Office and how it would get used on a Mac. There is software for this, but Apple brought out their own version, iWorks. Which does everything Office does, but naturally being from Apple can make things much more pleasing to the eye, where it’s more about presentation than function.
What if!… Apple are not allowing flash on the iphone, because they could bring out a new software platform to do away with Adobe? Think about it, with no dpi difference from print to web and no need to use flash, you could kill off Photoshop, InDesign and Flash, a large chunk of Adobe’s range. Simply replacing the huge and very expensive range of tools Adobe sell for one program that handles print, web and animation all in one!
This is all speculation in my own head right now, and am probably completely wrong. I’m not saying flash is fantastic because I do find it buggy and annoying at times, I just can’t agree that HTML5 will solve all the problems. It frustrates me that Apple, a company catering to the creative masses, says HTML5 is the future without providing a solution to the graphical build limitations of working in code or seeing changes happen on screen.
Even if everyone else in the office has already seen it as usual!
