Adobe is claiming that Google, Microsoft, Palm and Nokia will all be releasing either platforms, or phones that will be able to play the same videos and flash-based applications as their desktop and notebook counterparts.

At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Adobe will be demonstrating a beta build of their upcoming Flash 10 for smartphones. However, in direct response to the obvious holdouts, Adobe said that it was “not close to delivering Flash players that would work with Apple Inc.’s iPhone or Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry,” according to a report over at Computerworld.

This comes as no surprise given Apple’s longtime opposition to both mobile versions and desktop versions of Adobe’s flash player. Apple’s intentions with web technology revolve around open standards, and Flash does not. With Mobile Me, and now iWork.com, Apple has made it clear that anything Adobe thinks Flash is needed for, can alternatively be done with open, scalable technology such as Ajax, high-level programming languages such as JSON and frameworks like Sproutcore. A similar open-source application framework is Cappucino, and aside from Mobile Me and iWork.com, 280 slides is a wonderful example of what these open-standards can deliver.

“We’ve made a lot of progress, but there is still a lot of engineering work to be done,” said Anup Murarka, director of partner development and technology strategy for Adobe’s platform business unit, Computerworld explains. “We’re working with Apple on what we have,” Murarka said. “We’re committed to make the Flash plug-in work on the iPhone.” And with RIM, Adobe has made even lessprogress. Of note, Adobe says that it has optimized the Flash player’s performance specifically on the iPhone’s ARM v6 CPU, as well as the ARM v7 which Palm is planned to be using for the upcoming Palm Pre.

“We’ve had some initial conversations and are evaluating different approaches to be taken,” Murarka said. “There is a lot of interest from BlackBerry enterprise customers to be able to build Flash apps. But there is no working solution yet.”

Reports between Apple and Adobe surrounding Flash have been ongoing. For the most part, we cannot see Apple allowing any version of Flash to run on the iPhone. As it currently stands, the only real relevance Flash has anymore is for web video. The FLV video format remains so ubiquitous, that until something comes along that catches on faster, with better quality, Flash will stick around. Apple is pushing their H.264 format hard, and a deal with Youtube last year proved that other major players aren’t married to Flash. As we’ve previously explained, if the iPhone’s mobile Safari gets Flash, it better have an “off” setting.

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New in Adobe CS4 is an improved version of Photoshop CS4, which gained some additional Mac support, as well as some much needed improvements, such as official support for Apple’s existing multi-touch trackpads. Seeing as how Apple unveiled a new line of notebooks yesterday (which utilize multi-touch gestures), as well as new multi-touch gestures, Adobe’s software should be even easier and more powerful to use for Mac users.

“Creative Suite 4 and Flash Player 10 introduce vital time-saving features, new levels of integration and the jaw-dropping innovations our design and developer customers expect from us,” said John Loiacono, senior vice president, Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe. “CS4 continues to fulfill our promise to customers to break down more barriers in cross-media workflows, while also providing new services and collaboration tools that help them manage complex client demands.”

Adobe’s new Creative Suite bundles can be purchased from their official online store. You can also purchase upgrades and single applications from the online store.

• Design Premium (Upgrade: $599, Full:$1799)
• Design Standard (Upgrade: $499, Full:$1399)
• Web Premium (Upgrade: $599, Full:$1699)
• Web Standard (Upgrade: $399, Full:$999)
• Production Premium (Upgrade: $599, Full:$1699)
• Master Collection (Upgrade: $899, Full:$2499)

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A recent remark made by Adobe’s Senior Director of Engineering, Paul Betlem at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference in Brighton: “My team is working on Flash on the iPhone, but it’s a closed platform.’ He noted that Apple makes all the decisions, so in other words, the ball is in Apple’s yard at this time. If Apple says yes, Adobe will have the player available in a very short time.”

At a shareholder meeting earlier this year (referring to a gap in Adobe’s current Flash offerings), Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained that there is a “missing product in the middle somewhere,” and that there are “architectural limitations within Flash itself,” that can be blamed for the lack of iPhone support. Flash lite is too puny and a full version of Flash simply won’t perform well on the iPhone. Flash is very processor intensive, running all of those animations is simply not within reach for a mobile browser, nor is it necessary. The entire Flash platform within itself is a very touchy subject for many. My personal belief is that it is more pollution than good. The entire concept of the product being integrated within an open code environment like Apple’s iPhone makes me cringe. The idea that iPhone users would soon see Flash advertisements and horrid navigation components, while browsing in Mobile Safari isn’t particularly appealing.

With the recent remarks made, Adobe has essentially put the ball in Apple’s court. If Apple agrees, Adobe says they’ll have a version of Flash running on the iPhone in no time. If this happens, there better be an “Off” setting in Safari. Assuming the massive long shot that Apple will enable Flash support, a “Flash Off” setting should be the very least of what we should expect. Another way Apple could appease to all sides would be to develop a “Flash for iPhone” Mobile Safari plugin and distribute it via the App Store. Users could download this Safari Plugin and then enable or disable Flash support as they like. In order for this to work though, Apple would need to change its iPhone SDK Developer Guidelines which state that “all third-party software be released as standalone applications rather than as plug-ins.” Not likely to happen.

If Apple indeed enabled Flash support on the iPhone, users would then need an iPhone “Flash Video” player and the chances of that happening are about the same as seeing Steve Ballmer himself using an iPhone. Apple would never enable support for a competing media format on the iPhone. iTunes is the bread and butter that holds everything together for most users (and Apple). Allowing users to bypass Apple’s ecosystem and iTunes altogether is not within Apple’s best interest. Apple is not focused on supporting Flash on the iPhone, at least not while Steve Jobs holds the reigns. An Adobe spokesman Ryan Stewart, noted the following in a company blog post: “No one aside from [Apple chief executive] Steve Jobs has any idea if or when it’s coming. Everyone I talk to doesn’t know anything.”

What can’t be forgotten here is Apple’s intentions behind most of their reasoning. Aside from the format wars, Adobe’s Flash is a closed code environment. For the most part, it’s completely un-indexable, which means Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN and all search engines have a difficult time reading Flash content. Additionally, Apple is very controlling when it comes to the way their content is displayed. The iPhone SDK offers developers standard interface components, (buttons, input fields, icons) that Apple encourages developers to use, in the hopes of achieving a cross-application unified experience on the iPhone. Adobe’s Flash doesn’t integrate well with Apple’s end vision for user interface perfection. It’s a clash of fundamental control that Apple is not willing to relinquish.

Any way you look at the situation, Apple would need to alter something to enable Flash support on the iPhone. Either they alter their Developer Guidelines, rework Mobile Safari, or give up some user interface control. All three of them seem like extreme long shots, especially if you look at the way the iPhone as a platform and the App Store have been evolving.

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Contrary to some other applications within the CS4 suite, Photoshop actually has been improved. Even though there were some interface discrepancies at first, John Nack and Adobe have figured it all out, and Photoshop CS4 looks great.

I have been using the Photoshop CS4 beta for a few months now, and it flies. It even runs well on my little Hackintosh (although some of the filters render slowly). The big Mac-specific feature is support for the multi touch pads found on the MacBooks Air and Pro. You can pinch to zoom in and out, twist the image and also “throw” the picture across the screen: if you hold the space bar down, click and drag the image when it is zoomed in and then let go, the picture will continue to move before slowing and coming to rest. It’s very similar to the scrolling on the iPhone, Charlie Sorrel writes for Wired.com.

Adobe has officially added support for Apple’s existing multi-touch trackpads. Currently, the only notebooks Apple offers with this trackpad are the Macbook Pro and Macbook Air. However, several rumors point to a notebook line overhaul, which could include a special trackpad here or there. Sorrel goes onto explain how another great hardware feature, that both PC and Mac users benefit from, is Photoshop’s new GPU acceleration, which put more load onto the graphics card, leaving the processor alone.

Because these cards are made to process lots of data in parallel (all at the same time), the performance boost is quite surprising. One more thing which will keep Mac-heads happy: Command-tilde finally switches between open windows, just like all other Mac applications. It’s a small change, but it takes care of a big frustration.

Additionally, MacRumors points out that “While Apple provides basic multi-touch support in its own applications such as Safari and iPhoto, one 3rd party application called MultiClutch (beta) allows you to add custom keyboard shortcuts to multi-touch gestures on your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. “

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Back on September 3rd, we gave you a Sneak Peak at Adobe’s CS4, as well as a video interview with John Nack (Adobe Photoshop’s Principal Product Manager). Today, the company has unveiled its suite of applications, which are available for purchase here. Of note, CNet is reporting that rumors about the GPU accelerated Photoshop, were indeed true:

The new version of Adobe’s flagship software product takes its first steps in using the graphics processing unit, or GPU, said John Nack, principal product manager for Adobe Photoshop. For example, the graphics chip helps Photoshop CS4 fluidly zoom in and out, rotate the canvas so artists can reorient an image for the best sketching angle, display and manipulate 3D objects, and handle color correction.

“It’s not lost on us that when you look at the rate of GPU power advancement, there’s an enormous wealth of cycles we can take advantage of now,” Nack said. “The rate of price drop and performance gain has been off the charts.”

“Pixel Blender” is a feature that Adobe has been working on which gives users the ability to quickly apply various special effects. Nack explains that this feature will most likely be a free update from Adobe Labs.

“Adobe Photoshop CS4 will cost $699 and ship in October. Existing Photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS2, or Photoshop CS owners can upgrade for $199. Adobe Photoshop Extended will cost $999 and existing Photoshop CS3 Extended, Photoshop CS2 or Photoshop CS owners can upgrade for $349.”

[Attribution: MacRumors]

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In May, Adobe made three betas available for download, DreamWeaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth. All three applications will be part of the upcoming Creative Suite 4. We reported the following.

Three new betas from Adobe have been released and made available for download including Dreamweaver (web-design software), Fireworks (web-optimization software), and Soundbooth (audio-production software). Although the next version of Photoshop (photo-editing software) has not been made available for download, enhancements such as taking advantage of hardware it hasn’t tapped before: graphics cards and physics processors, have been announced.

Adobe is completely denying any version of CS4 to be shipping in October. They don’t deny that something is cooking (in the works), but no launch date is set and furthermore, has never been released. Read full denial by Adobe’s vice president John Nack here.

Additionally, around the same time period, Adobe was denying all claims that any version of CS4 existed. Maybe they were trying to keep us guessing as much as they could before inevitably releasing a webcast to tickle us a little before the launch. Users can sign up for the webcast by visiting this website and submitting a valid email address. You can then choose what timezone suits you best for viewing the CS4 Sneak Preview on September 23rd.

As I’ve metioned before, “Having test-driven the new Adobe Dreamweaver beta myself, you can download it here, (and see some screenshots here) I have not seen ONE feature or improvement that would sway me from Panic’s Coda.” Which has recently been upgraded to version 1.5, with Subversion baked right in.

John Nack, Adobe Photoshop’s Principal Product Manager, has a personal blog in which he reveals perhaps the closest insider information available about Adobe. Alleged leaked screenshots from Adobe’s upcoming Photoshop CS4, for which no beta download was available, caused quite a stir around the community. Users were complaining about everything from the new interface being too grey, to everything being too close together. Nack responded on his personal blog, and with a video on Youtube, hoping to clear up any misconceived notions about the upcoming Photoshop release. Additionally, when various sites repeated information, and apparently completely made up a release date for CS4, John Nack responded as follows:

I’m not feeling a lot of confidence in the tech press these days. People just make up whatever they want, creating a bunch of expectations & misperceptions that people like me have to try to unravel. There’s no disincentive to doing so: the sites still get their ad impressions, and clearly bloggers and readers are all too happy to take what they read at face value.

AppleInsider continues to explain, “Adobe is planning a slew of enhancements in Flash CS4 (codenamed Diesel) that have resonated well with early testers, leading some to bill upgrade as “the best thing” to happen to Flash in quite some time. Among these will be a completely new “and proper” timeline dubbed Motion Editor, as well as a new object-based motion tween model. Other enhancements bound for Flash CS4 reportedly include an “Inverse kinematics” tool for building complex animations and 3D rotation support.”

They continue to say that “People familiar with the ongoing development of Creative Suite 4.0 say a good chunk of Adobe’s resources for the project were devoted to bringing two applications acquired from Macromedia — Dreamweaver and Fireworks — up to spec with its existing flagship offerings. However, the company is expected to tout a handful of significant enhancements to both Photoshop and Flash.”

With whatever new feature sets, panel enhancements or interface improvements we may see, I genuinely hope that Adobe’s upcoming Creative Suite 4 smells a little less like Windows, and feels a little more native to Mac OS X.

John Nack Video Interview from Frederick Vann

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“We’ve been working hard to make the interfaces of the various apps more consistent. Because the Adobe Fireworks and Dreamweaver betas are available on Adobe Labs, you can now see some of the interface changes that will appear in the next version of Photoshop as well. I’d like to address some of the concerns and questions I hear bubbling up. In particular, I hope to put Mac users’ minds at ease about a few things.” John explains.

“I believe Adobe teams need to work hard to make their products feel like polished, native citizens on each OS. Deviation from the norm for its own sake is unhelpful. Having said that, OS conventions should support innovation, not stifle it. If we can improve functionality (e.g. enabling more flexible document resizing) without imposing any burden (extra UI chrome, etc.), why shouldn’t we? Our job is about functionality, not ideology. Whatever works best, wins. Obviously the Apple development teams feel free to depart from strict adherence to the baseline OS when they feel that doing so would benefit their customers. I’d argue that Adobe teams should have similar latitude.” He continues to explain.


The designers pointed out that the app frame has a number of advantages:

• It facilitates N-up (2-up, 3-up, etc.) document layouts that adapt as you adjust the interface. Think “live window tiling”–great for comparing, compositing, etc.
• It makes it easier to move the entire application and its contents, including from one monitor to another.
• It prevents documents from getting obscured by panels (palettes).
• It blocks out the contents of the desktop, minimizing visual clutter. (A number of Mac users have requested this option for many years. I’ve known quite a few people who open a small blank document, hit F to put it into full-screen mode, and then put it into the background to hide the desktop. Willingness to live with that kind of hack demonstrates some genuine desire for a real fix.)

I definitely have some initial nervousness and apprehension when hearing news about an interface change to a staple application like Photoshop. “There are enough learning curves that we have to deal with throughout our lives, Photoshop should be careful not to drastically change anything,” I thought to myself. But, after watching this video and seeing the screenshot of the new Interface, I’m kind of excited. Additionally, the fact that Adobe makes this new user interface an option to use is hugely beneficial to users who may be scared to make the jump.

It seems as though Adobe’s future plans are being met with some resistance, understandably. The idea to turn the new interface into a preference/option for us to choose/experiment with is a great move. It sets a re-assuring feeling in my head that even though there may be changes, I won’t be forced to use them (or learn how to work with them) within my current workflow.

Please note: There’s been no public timeframe for the release of this next version of Adobe’s Photoshop, but there were some contested claims of an October release target. The next Mac version of Photoshop has been announced to remain a 32-bit application. 64-bit support is expected on the subsequent version for the Mac, MacRumors reports.

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While Adobe’s Flash animation/video player is still not supported by the iPhone, rendering many sites unreadable, it has been a feature that people have expressed great interest in. Yet up until now, Steve Jobs has been critical of supporting a mobile version of Flash, suggesting that it wouldn’t be powerful enough for the iPhone.

However, during Adobe’s Q2 earnings call, chief exec Shantanu Narayen noted that, “We have a version that’s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that we’ve made to date.”

While this sounds rather promising, the problem may not lie in perfecting a version of mobile Flash, but rather convincing Apple to allow it on the iPhone. “The easiest solution, which Adobe could do on its own, is to make a standalone Flash player, which people could use to watch Flash video files or animations by themselves. To get that into the market, Adobe would just need to submit it for inclusion into the iPhone apps store.” via Silicon Alley Insider.

Unfortunately this would not be anything like the way that Flash works on a computer, where it for the most part, will seamlessly display animation, video, ads..etc, as it has been integrated into web browsers.

“Adobe could independently achieve that on the iPhone, in theory, by commissioning/building its own Web browser with built-in Flash software — even one using the same Webkit guts as Safari. But assuming this is possible, it would also be very cumbersome. And there’s no guarantee that Apple would allow a Safari competitor into the apps store.”

Striking a deal with Apple to include Flash as a plugin for Safari may be the best option. Yet this would require a far different business interaction than Apple has with App Store developers. So will we ever see Flash supported on the iPhone? I would hope so as there are many sites that I would like to have access to that are reliant on Flash, namely, Hulu, where I could watch streaming movies and TV shows.

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Adobe takes great pride in the Creative Suite applications they produce and sell. Targeting all creative and production professionals, Adobe’s applications are an industry standard, as well as heavily relied upon work-flow staples. A full list of the applications that Adobe sells can be found here. Adobe sells all of these applications as bundles they call Creative Suites, and as standalone pieces of software. Among these applications is a piece of software called Adobe Dreamweaver, (the web-design and development tool).

Dreamweaver has always been clunky, slow and rather un-responsive, making it feel like a piece of native Windows software. This new version of Adobe Dreamweaver Creative Suite 4, is sadly no exception.

Some early reviews left beta testers stunned and thoroughly disappointed, with a couple of reviewers saying the following:

Having test-driven the new Adobe Dreamweaver beta myself, you can download it here, I have not seen ONE feature or improvement that would sway me from Panic’s Coda.

Panic is a Portland based company (they’re our neighbors!) that have spent countless hours developing a Magical web-development application for the mac-based developer. I find ZERO use for Adobe’s Dreamweaver as Adobe has completely missed the mark yet again with CS4.

Please be cautious: We do NOT recommend professionals who rely on these programs daily to download these betas on their primary machines. If you have a secondary computer, then we suggest testing out these betas on that. Please keep in mind that this is beta software and finding bugs is expected.

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Three new betas from Adobe have been released and made available for download including Dreamweaver (web-design software), Fireworks (web-optimization software), and Soundbooth (audio-production software). Although the next version of Photoshop (photo-editing software) has not been made available for download, enhancements such as taking advantage of hardware it hasn’t tapped before: graphics cards and physics processors, have been announced.

Early Enhancements to these applications include the following:

Dreamweaver:

The “New Live View Mode” is a necessary feature enhancement. Adobe is behind the game on this front, seeing as how Panic’s Coda has this built right in. And Coda lets you work directly on your server.

Fireworks:

Soundbooth:

Unless you have an Adobe CS3 Serial Number, the beta downloads will only work for 48 hours. Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later is required, along with an Intel processor is you’re planning on using Soundbooth.

We do NOT recommend professionals who rely on these programs daily to download these betas on their primary machines. If you have a secondary computer, then we suggest testing out these betas on that. Please keep in mind that this is beta software and finding bugs is expected.

[updates] Adobe is completely denying any version of CS4 to be shipping in October. They don’t deny that something is cooking (in the works), but no launch date is set and furthermore, has never been released. Read full denial by Adobe’s vice president John Nack here.

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