Google recently introduced Swiffy, a service that converts .SWF Flash files into HTML5 compatible with devices like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Swiffy is part of the Google Labs suite of services that has the potential to become a major part of Google’s media integration in its desktop and Android OS.

Google’s Swiffy website offers a gallery of videos and games that have been converted to HTML5 from Flash and a list of Frequently Asked Questions. The website also mentions Adobe and what it thinks about Swiffy.

Adobe is pleased to see the Flash platform extended to devices which don’t support the Flash player.The result is that anyone creating rich or interactive ads can continue to get all the authoring benefits of Flash Pro and have the flexibility to run the ad in the Flash Player or HTML depending on what’s available on the system. Google and Adobe look forward to close collaboration around efforts like these.

Swiffy’s output file works in all browsers based on Apple’s open-source Webkit engine, which powers the Mobile Safari browser found on iOS devices. Google Swiffy is limited in terms of scope and only offers a few types of conversions.

Google has a product that can possibly become a major part of 3rd party development on Apple’s iOS WebKit. The company has attempted video conversion through YouTube in the past and is currently promoting it’s own WebM over Apple’sH.264 format.

The company says that it’s WebM format can possibly “enable open innovation”. From an analytical point of view, it seems that Google is attempting to step over Apple, while using iOS platform as it’s stepping stone.

Google and Apple are competitors but are forced to work together due to similar customer base and alike business motive. Google, meanwhile, is offering products that Apple is not, such as Swiffy, and other services that sidestep iOS limitations.

The new change closely resembles tabs on Google’s Chrome web browser. The search giant has also updated their generic search to include a drop down grid of all the different search types, and apps, instead of the old text list. The latest UI update has only been updated on Google’s Web search, Video search, News and Blogs.

The older ‘blue’ interface still appears on Image Search, Places, Shopping, Finance, Apps, iGoogle and Books. Google Apps, like GMail, Google Translate, Google Docs and Google Reader haven’t received any form of update either, although Google might slowly roll those out after the initial UI change.

YouTube was revamped a few months ago, and most recently, Google Maps also received an all new HTML 5 base. Google is moving past Apple’s pre-installed Maps application into an entirely web based mobile interface, similar to that of their web based desktop OS, currently running on numerous netbooks.

Twitter is completely hauling out it’s old web app design so that when you now head over to Twitter on an iPhone or iPod touch, it is very close in design to the actual app in the Apple app store. This isn’t very surprising considering that Twitter is closely following in the steps that Facebook took in redesigning their mobile site.

At first, Facebook rolled out an update for their iPhone app, then they completely redesigned the mobile site to resemble the app. This seems to be what Twitter is planning to do. There is a downside though, not all Twitter users are able to see the mobile site yet. Twitter is slowly rolling it out to users across the world, allowing only a select group to see and interact with the new redesign.

We want you to be able to access Twitter no matter where you are; regardless of what device you use; or, whether you prefer to access Twitter through a mobile application or the browser. Today, we’re starting to roll out a new version of twitter.com for mobile devices. This web app allows us to provide a high-quality and consistent Twitter experience on high-end touchscreen devices – whether or not an official Twitter application is available. It was built from the ground up for smartphones and tablets, which have more advanced browsers that support the latest web technologies, including HTML5.

Those who have used the new design say it runs much more fluidly and looks much better than the previous design. We’ll just have to wait and see when all users get the new redesign.

HTML5 is the web standard Jobs and co believe makes Flash pretty much obsolete and is the backbone of all the shiny new webapps popping up all over the internet. Even YouTube now supports HTML5 for those who don’t want to fight with Flash just to watch a video of a cat on a skateboard. The fact that Adobe is trying to give developers a way to convert Flash items into HTML5 will be of great interest to iOS developers out there. Just think how many Facebook apps they could make run on an iPad!

Before everyone gets too excited, remember this is still early days and the tool isn’t yet ready for public release. Watch this space.

[at MAX 2010] Sneak Peeks – Export fla file to html file.

The HTML test on the iPod, which has the same guts as an iPhone 4 sans 3G radio, ran at a choppy 22fps. The same test on the now discontinued Nexus One yielded a less choppy but not exactly fluid, 40fps.

This is noteworthy in itself, but Black went on. The next test was to try the same animation – a bouncing ball – on the Nexus One running Adobe’s latest Flash release (10.1). This gave the best results of all – a mouth-watering 57fps. That’s just 3 frames short of the magical 60fps that gamers strive for. Just to rub salt into the wounds, the Flash test also happened to use around half as much battery power!

There seems to be some debate about the benchmarks used, and Black has posted an update to his original post:

Hey everyone, thought I might chime in as the author of the blog post being criticized. The code was engineered to be as equal as possible between the two demos. Full source has been provided to show this. The code posted by wolever is not scalable but raises some interesting points. The physical dimensions of the canvas being rendered does matter. Scaling the demo down to 300x300px yields 40fps on the iPod Touch. I’ll be doing an updated blog post on this tomorrow showing results at different sizes. I’m not sure why anybody thinks canvas is limited to 24fps. My post tomorrow that wrong. And no, I don’t work for Adobe. I complain about Adobe almost as much as Apple and I much prefer running my own company at the moment. You might find this post a bit more interesting, http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2010/09/19/css3-excels-on-ios-but-lacks-on-android/

All very interesting, and it will be interesting to see what results and conclusions can be gleamed from further testing. When you remember how strongly Apple CEO Steve Jobs has gone after Adobe’s Flash in the past, these tests get even more interesting!

Flash Outperforms HTML5 on Mobile Devices

It was with interest then this week with which I observed an interesting trend. Steve Jobs made a very telling statement during his interview at D8:

Well let first say we have two platforms we support. One is open and uncontrolled — that’s HTML5. We support HTML5. We have the best support for it of anyone in the world. We then support a curated platform which is the app store. It is the most vital app community on any platform. How do we curate this? It’s a bunch of people, and they come into work every day. We have a few rules: has to do what it’s advertised to do, it has to not crash, it can’t use private APIs. And those are the three biggest reasons we reject apps. But we approve 95% of all the apps that are submitted every week.

While some saw this as an obvious dig at those that say Apple’s application submissions system is arbitrary and closed, I see something else buried in that statement. Steve wants to go back to the future of web apps. He would like nothing better to see growth in the viable web apps available for the iPhone OS ecosystem. Apple has even gone so far as to create a showcase of HTML 5 web applications which we wrote about yesterday. Why would Apple want to push developers towards an ecosystem they can’t control? I would propose a twofold answer to that question.

The first answer is somewhat cynical. Apple has every interest in promoting technologies that support its position against Flash. HTML 5 and web applications have the ability to replace everything developers currently do with Flash. A growth in web applications could be the body blow required to finally knock it out. While any web page can now be placed as a shortcut on the Home Screen of an iPhone OS-based device, purpose-built web apps created using Apple-supported technologies would raise that capability to a new level. Fully functional, web-based applications that don’t require Flash will fundamentally change public opinion about the usefulness of the technology. Anyone that has used the Google Voice application written using HTML 5 knows that it appears and functions just as if it was a native application. There isn’t a bit of Flash in it. Now imagine if thousands of such examples existed.

The second answer is about where Apple sees the future opportunity. Google announced at their I/O conference they would be opening a web apps store later this year. This app store would allow developers to submit their web applications to a central store where users would purchase access to them. The only requirement for use would be an HTML 5-compliant browser like Chrome, Safari, or the upcoming IE 9. It isn’t much of a leap to see Apple has an eye on similar revenue streams. There is a whole pool of web developers out there that could be tapped to develop applications for the iPhone. These applications would be cross platform, runnable on any iPhone OS device, and future-proof against upgrades. An uncurated web apps store could be a shining example Apple would hold up against their critics. It would deflect criticism and turn them a tidy little profit. Who could ask for anything more?

Does Apple’s current emphasis on web apps signal a return to some of the original intentions for the iPhone or a cynical redirection of criticism? Would you be willing to use more web apps on your iPhone OS device? Does the origin of an app (native code versus web apps) matter to you? Leave us your thoughts in the comments section.

Poll Question

Cast your vote!

Check out the demo version (HTML5) of iPhone game Hand of Greed ($.99) here.

Apple has updated their website with a new page to promote and educate users about HTML5 and web standards. The showcase features 7 demos which prove that Safari for Mac, Windows and iPhone OS support the capabilities of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

These web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient. They allow web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, typography, animations, and transitions.

It is interesting to note that the webpage says “Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today.” However, in order to experience these “Standards” you will have to “add-on” Safari as your desktop browser. A blog post on Opera community claims that the reason behind the web page not working in the other browsers is:

Apple claim to promote HTML5 and an open Web, but the page uses browser sniffing to block other browsers, vendor prefixes for the CSS3 stuff they are using (even if other browsers support border-radius it won’t work because it’s coded using -webkit-border-radius), and the patent-encumbered H.264 for video.

Apple has been aggressively promoting HTML5 and have no intentions of bringing Adobe Flash to iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

HTML5 Showcase

• Video
• Typography
• Gallery
• Transitions
• Audio
• 360°
• VR

Mr. Narayen called Steve’s accusations of Flash draining battery power “patently false.” A statement which is in itself “patently false”.

Mr. Narayen also said that if Adobe crashes on Apple, then that actually has something “to do with the Apple operating system.” Something which brought both laughter and ire from a large portion of both the Apple User and Developer communities.

And finally on Jobs’s assertion that Adobe is a closed platform, Mr. Narayen chuckled and said. “I find it amusing, honestly. Flash is an open specification.”

None of these statements make much sense. And all smack of damage limitation in a battle that Adobe themselves have admitted defeat in with their announcement earlier this week that they would not be pursuing development of tools for Flash on the iPhone.

Microsoft themselves in a blog entry about Internet Explorer have also made it very clear that in future implementations of Internet Explorer their HTML5 engines will only support H.264 video.

Even more embarrassingly ex-employes of Adobe have openly criticised Adobe’s strategy with regards to mobile-platforms and the iPhone in an interview with Wired. In that article they cite Adobe’s strategy as the reason they ultimately left the company.

For a second time in Apple’s and Adobe’s history it seems that Adobe have chosen to ignored an Apple platform in its early stages and been caught out looking incredibly slow later on. If they had only made some fairly intelligent decisions early on we may not all be obsessing over this tech grudge match, and we might even have seen some form of Flash on the iPhone. This seems like something that will never happen now.

Meanwhile the majority of right thinking bloggers and technical analysts all agree that Apple is forging ahead with an aggressive strategy to create a dominant product eco-system, and ensure continued market leadership in mobile devices with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Basing this strategy on hard lessons they learned in their dealings with companies like Adobe in the past, and their loss of market leadership in the desktop computer sector in the tech industry’s now ancient history.

What is your take on Adobe’s reaction to all this? Do you think Steve is right, or Mr. Narayen’s response was on the right track? Let us know in the comments.

Adobe has officially abandoned support for the Flash interpreter it previously trumpeted as a gateway for developers to get their games on the iPhone and iPad. As reported in 9To5Mac, Adobe will leave the interpreter/compiler currently included in the CS5 suite but with little hope of it working on future iterations of the iPhone OS. Adobe has also stopped any future investments in development of the system. Additionally, Adobe advised developers with apps currently available for the iPhone OS platform they fully expected them to get yanked soon.

And just like that, one of the most contentious issues in the iPhone environment is over. When the iPhone debuted in 2007, Flash was a dominant force in the dynamic web. Many foretold the lack of Flash support as a significant weakness in the system. Three years into the grand iPhone experiment and it was Adobe that blinked, not Apple. The same held true of the iPad. Many moaned and groaned it did not support Flash but the maturity of the HTML 5 and H.264 standards have all but assured Flash’s place in history.

While Google has welcomed Adobe with open arms during their spat with Apple, it has been, as I’ve said before, for rather cynical reasons. Google was happy to have Adobe in their corner for as long as it benefits them. Being able to say you support Flash on your platform versus Apple that doesn’t is a key element in a strategy of attracting the users who want Flash-enabled content. It will be interesting to see how long that strange marriage lasts. As noted in the article:

But Is Google excited about Flash? Remember, it was Youtube that went to H.264-encoded MP4s (and made lack of Flash on the iPhone that much more bearable). That wasn’t because Google was head over heals for depending on Flash and their technology.

Ultimately this whole episode demonstrates two things. First, Apple carries such influence and power in the current computing environment it creates trends, it doesn’t follow them. By blocking Flash and becoming a proponent of HTML 5, Apple shaped the future of computing. When was the last time Google or Microsoft did that? Second, Flash is quickly becoming an anachronism of a time where the plug-in internet was the only way to support dynamic content. As standardization makes the web experience universal, companies like Adobe will have to adapt or move on.

What do you think of Adobe’s decision to quit the iPhone platform? Is it a victory for Apple and standardization? Is it a defeat for choice and platform freedom? Let us know what you think below.

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