The Mac runs some Windows apps better than Windows and the Windows user experience has been basically the same for 10 years! And, I understand that with Alchemy a C++ version of Doom runs as fast or faster than it does “natively”.

The reason that Apple has done so well is because they had such a pathetic target to compare against. We all know that technical capabilities often don’t translate into innovative apps that solve practical problems. Maybe it took the iPhone to show developers the, “art of the possible” but by no means does that validate the entire Apple story nor suggest Adobe should pack up its “world domination” goals and go home

Sorry, Aral, but I fail to see the logic there. What good is it to produce mobile content that isn’t supported on the mobile devices? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

My recommendation for Adobe … forget trying to develop standalone dev platforms entirely, focus on optimising your plug-ins (making them more efficient and prevent CPU inefficiencies).

Then support 3rd party solutions like OpenPlug to do it for them – Adobe is too strapped as it is – they need to leverage those relationships.

Besides, if they can develope plug-ins that run efficiently, adequate stand-alone type operation should be available using regular swf’s be running a local server on each device, with it’s own database.

Flash being a client-server archetecture by nature lends itself, imho, perhaps even better than typical standalone app architecture, if they worked out the logistics right – it’s just that they never have. I see no reason, in fact, why ANY web app, be it Flash, HTML, PHP, CF, etc,couldn’t be standalone if browsers were designed properly. Browsers are too stupid.

And if you ask me, I’d say that’s where the future lies – where standalone and web apps are one and the same because they’ll all be based on client-server architecture where the browser handles everything intelligently with it’s own local server. CPU speeds are finally getting to where that can be done – we just need to re-arrange our thinking about how browsers should work now.

“Where Microsoft struggles to provide at least a mediocre user experience across the countless hardware combinations that it must support, Apple runs circles around it: Having limited itself to a handful of hardware configurations – all, furthermore, within its control – Apple can provide its users with an exemplary user experience. Apple can do this because it wisely chose to control both the hardware and the software, limit segmentation, and focus on the user experience instead of expanding effort in a fruitless quest to run on any given hardware configuration on the planet. ”

Are you serious Apple Fan Boy? That strategy nearly drove Apple to the grave until Microsoft bailed them out. Then, Apple started selling MP3 players in order to survive. Even today, Mac OSX only runs on 5% of the world’s computers. FIVE PERCENT!!! In 2010!!! Google it.

Leave it to Apple and its Fan Boys to make such a laughable article!

Good day gents.

FL has its flaws, but the fact that it never worked in the US and Europe is not fundamentally a technology issue – it’s more due to how long it took those markets to adopt mobile devices capable of doing anything interesting.