It seems like Steve’s reality distortion field is still functioning, even from the grave. Adobe announced today that it is killing Flash for future devices allowing HTML5 to win. Steve was violently opposed to Flash saying how it was an old piece of technology that deserved to be shelved. At that time however, there was nothing in the industry that could adequately replace it, especially since Flash is being used to power Youtube, the most popular video site on the web today.

Then came HTML5 and how quickly did the other browsers come to support it. HTML5 was an amazing piece of work allowing developers to mimic everything flash could do AND search friendly. The problem with flash based websites was that these animations were really not optimized for search.

So what is Adobe focusing on? From their blog, the company is relinquishing Adobe Flash on mobile devices and instead working on helping developers package their products into Adobe AIR and bring them straight to the different application stores for Android, Apple and Blackberry. Additionally they are working to innovate in the HTML5 space.

So yes, Flash is truly on its way out with this last generation of devices. In fact I pity the BlackBerry Playbook the most as their main selling point was that you could play Farmville while on Facebook. The argument is actually moot as Zynga is looking to invest into HTML5 but it seems to be a long painful road to get there.

At face value there really is nothing to be alarmed about. Adobe doesn’t seem to be in too much trouble as it’s merely looking to focus on their AIR product. What’s making this news bit intriguing is really the fact that Steve was passionately against Flash in an industry that really forced it to stay.

The Quadro shares the same specs as its PC counterpart. 256 CUDA cores power the 4000 which is complimented by a 256-bit memory interface and 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

The card, which is only compatible with the Mac Pro, carries a suggested retail price of $1,199. Nvidia is aiming this card at professionals using pro level Apps such as Adobe’s Premier Pro which leverages the GPU to offload some processing duties. Other Apps that render 3D graphics such as Octane Render and Bunkspeed Shot can tap in to the Quadro’s GPU when more horse power is needed.

The Quadro will be available later this month from Apple and other retailers.

All this Flash/Apple stuff is irritating, and at this point, it’s a bit of a broken record. But this weekend, I noticed something about Flash that kind of bugged me.

I was chugging along on my work, doing the usual stuff, and my iStat readings in my menu bar say that my MacBook Pro is around 135 degrees. I turn on Penny Arcade’s PATV channel to watch the latest episode while I work on a spreadsheet. I’ve got SMC Fan Control set on 4500 RPM, and the only difference is this program that I’m watching, running on Flash.

The video is about to end and I look at the temp. It shot up to 168 degrees in under 5 minutes, while my fans are running at more than twice the normal speed for the computer. The taxing on the processor is amazing.

Anyways, Bit-Tech is reporting that Adobe Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player are all vulnerable to a remote attack.

The vulnerabilities – which are regarded by the company to be ‘critical’ – affect Adobe Reader, Acrobat, and Flash Player on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, and UNIX-based systems – in other words, every single platform the packages are currently available for.

The issue – which it is believed relates to the way that Acrobat handle ShockWave-format content embedded within files – can be mitigated by deleting the file authplay.dll from your installation directory. While this will result in Adobe Acrobat and Reader crashing should you open a PDF file containing ShockWave content, it’ll prevent maliciously-crafted files from having their wicked way with your system.

Currently, there is no known workaround for the issue in Adobe Flash Player – although the company’s director of product security Brad Arkin states that Adobe is working on a patch as quickly as possible. For now, the only way to be safe out there is to either uninstall the Flash Player plugins from your system, or to upgrade to the release candidate of Flash Player 10.1 which is not thought to be vulnerable.

OS X isn’t perfect, and there are vulnerabilities in Snow Leopard as well – or there may be ones waiting to be found. But if you need another reason why Apple doesn’t want Adobe on the iPhone, here you go.

Apparently, Apple versus Adobe is the tech field’s Chevy versus Ford. I, for one, am pretty tired of reading about this petty crap, so I’ve decided to stay away from reporting it for the most part. That was the case anyways, until yesterday. Time to address it, I suppose.

The NY Post is reporting that Time Warner and NBC Universal are going to keep their online offerings in Flash and not rewrite the code for another option because it will cost them money.

Though the iPad has been a huge hit, media companies are feeling emboldened in their rebuffing of Apple by the launch of rival touch-screen tablet devices, such as the ones coming from Dell Computer and Hewlett-Packard, sources said.

In addition, one media executive pointed out that Apple’s ability to dictate terms to the media giants will be weakened further by Google TV, a software product that enables viewers to watch online video on their big-screen TVs.

Read: “We’re not betting on Apple, we’re going to put our money on Google to save us with a product that as of right now is vaporware.”

Look, here’s the deal. Times change. Flash will not be the only way people consumer video on the web for all eternity. Standards change. Formats change. Eventually, something better than Flash will come along and we’ll all use that instead. Some say it’s the new HTML5 standards, others may bet on something else. Whatever it is, Flash will not be the only option forever, just like iTunes will not be the only way we consume our music and movies. Things change.

The problem is when those things change, not everyone is cool with the way the transition is handled. From my perspective, Flash is handling this like a big baby. It took them until CS5 to come up with a system that was coded specifically for the Intel processors, three years after the fact. And CS4 is great – if you like programs that crash all the time and hog resources. Apple isn’t innocent in this situation, either. I completely get why they’re doing this: Apple isn’t willing to work Flash into their OS because Adobe has proven to them, time after time, that they won’t keep up with their own technologies at Apple’s pace. As a result, screw them. It’s that last part that’s working people the wrong way, and making Apple appear like a bully to poor, innocent Adobe.

Here’s the facts: Most people out there have no idea what Adobe Flash is. They may know that they’ve needed a Flash player to watch that porn they downloaded, but they don’t necessarily know what it is. So to them, Apple is the bad guy, telling them they can’t have something that they’re not sure they want. Meanwhile, millions of people have been using iPhones for years now, all without Flash. Tell me, how many of them are complaining? I’m not, and I don’t know too many people who are.

I’m tired of this argument. If NBC and Time Warner don’t want to change over then let them stay with Flash. 5 years from now they’ll be recoding their libraries anyways to match some other new technology anyways, and they’ll just be one more step behind the curve. And when that happens, and it cuts into their profits, then it’s their own fault. As for Apple, I think they should stop talking about this. They’ve spoken their final words, so let’s leave this sleeping dog to die.

And with that, I’m now done talking about Flash.

Until the next time it’s news, I suppose.

Seems like the hot topic around the old intertubes is about Adobe Flash, and the iPad’s lack of it. The people at Adobe aren’t thrilled with it, as evidenced by this post on their blog, which up until recently, had a little bit of porno to back up their claim. Daring Fireball has been talking about Flash and why we don’t need it for over a week, and even Steve himself brought it up recently in a fireside chat. Let’s take a minute to talk about Flash and why it’s so important.

When I bought my iPhone, I did a lot of surfing on the web. There were a few different sites that didn’t quite work the way I wanted to, but anytime I had a problem, it was all Flash related. Missing links, ads, etc. I wouldn’t say that I “missed” those things, but regardless, this little part of the web was missing, like someone took out a piece of the puzzle. But over time, I got used to it. I learned to just accept the Lego bricks where I saw them, and moved on with life. I didn’t do enough browsing on the iPhone to make it a big deal, so why stress?

With the iPad, that may change things a bit. I originally thought that without Flash, there was no way that the iPad could succeed. All those Flash games can’t be played on the iPad, making the mobile web experience less like a missing piece in a puzzle, and more like a missing beef patty in a hamburger.

But then, there’s this little bit from that article at Wired:

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

Although I use them every day, I’m not a huge fan of Adobe products. They’re buggy, tend to crash a lot and cost so much it’s ridiculous. Of course, that doesn’t stop the world from using their products, including Flash, on everything they can. The web is particularly heavy with Flash animation, and as such, people have been asking since 2007 why it’s not available on the iPhone. Turns out that soon it might be.

Ed Oswald has a post over on PC World about Adobe’s development of Flash, and how it’s been going on for the past few years, without any help from Apple. Long story short, it’s a workaround. To quote Oswald:

Either way Adobe is not going to wait much longer. It’s Creative Suite 5 product, now going through private beta, is going to include functionality that will automatically convert Flash applications to ones that are compatible with the iPhone.

Is this a big deal? I’ve spent the past two years without Flash on the phone and I can count on one hand how many times that’s inconvenienced me. Sure, I can see that certain websites might have a problem with it, and some hardcore iPhone web surfers might get a little touchy about the conversation, but ultimately, it’s not that big of a deal to me. At least not on the surface.

But here’s where it gets tricky: If Adobe releases this workaround and it works correctly, then Flash developers could create their own apps and their own app store, and have it all accessible via a web interface, circumventing the Apple App Store entirely. Sound a little bit paranoid? I’ve got a buddy who’s a Flash developer, and that’s exactly how he’s going to do it. Saves the hassle of going through the approval process.

This should come to a head next year when Creative Suite 5 comes out, so it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

That aside, Photoshop Mobile is easily a brainless purchase. Every iPhone and iPod touch should have a copy because it compensates for the lack of on the fly editing software built into the iPhone. What it is, essentially is a mobile version of iPhoto, allowing you to crop and rotate your images, apply pre-made effects such as “vibrant”, “black and white”, “borders”, “vignette”, “rainbow” … you get the drift. You can also manually adjust the exposure, saturation and tint.

Photoshop Mobile also allows access to Photoshop.com, which means that apart from linking your Flickr, Facebook and Photobucket accounts to some sort of “iPhoto online,” you can also add your mobile uploads. On a personal note, I’m still having issues with the photo uploads and online sync. Maybe it’s because I’m not from the USA — registering for the site had multiple errors if you try to register via mobile, but it works fine from the Photoshop website. So if you’re experiencing problems logging on from your iPhone, use the web version first to register.

[Download Link: Photoshop.com Mobile]

In a move that is probably going to be over analyzed by pundits everywhere, Adobe has decided not to have a booth on the show floor of the upcoming Macworld Expo 2009.

The company is not dismissing the entire show, but they have decided to focus on demonstration and education sessions instead.

In previous years the company has had a very large presence at the show, even using the expo to launch products at times. With the most recent update, Adobe CS4, being released in October, you’d think they would have a space available on the show floor for people to try out the new features.

They will be offering a full day of CS4 demos during the event, but that’s just not the same. Adobe did, however, want to make it clear that their reasoning has nothing to do with a shift away from the Mac platform. “The Mac community is very important to us and we will continue our strong support for this platform.”

If you’re the type of person that just CAN’T WAIT to try out the next version of Photoshop, illustrator, Flash, or any of the other Apps in Adobe’s Creative Suite, then you’re probably going to want to head over to Adobe.com and get to downloading.

Adobe has released trial versions of Acrobat 9 Pro, Photoshop CS4 Extended, Director 11, Premier Pro CS4, InDesign CS4, Dreamweaver CS4, Lightroom 2, Fireworks CS4, and Photoshop Elements for download. You’ll need an Adobe account (free) to get them – then you’ll have 30 days to try them out before they stop working.

Each one comes in at about 1 GB each, except for Premiere which is about twice that. I’m hesitant to try them out right now – I’m quite happy with what I have, and I don’t want to drop the cash on an upgrade.

If you give them a shot, though, leave us a comment below and let us know how they work.

Adobe’s next version of Photoshop is looking pretty interesting. Video’s from Adobe’s site showcase some of the interesting things you can do with the software, including creating 3-D (as in red and blue glasses) images, and many, many more features.

One feature that will be Mac only, though is Multi-touch. Wired writes:

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.

It’s beginning to look like Photoshop is going to have some very fun features in its next incarnation. The software is available for pre-order now, and will go on sale Nov. 7th.

Upon hearing this, I decided to see if I could check out the 30 Day trials for the applications. They aren’t up on the official site yet…and the CS2 trials have been removed. It also says “Pre-Order” next to each CS3 application, so I expect the site to be updated soon with new 30 Day trial versions of the CS3 applications, for those of you that are curious about seeing if CS3 is really worth mortgaging your house for…

You can visit the official Adobe Downloads page by clicking here

Here it is:

* Photoshop CS3
* Photoshop CS3 Extended
* InDesign CS3
* Illustrator CS3
* Flash CS3 Professional
* Dreamweaver CS3
* After Effects CS3
* Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional
* Adobe Contribute CS3
* Adobe Fireworks CS3
* Adobe Premiere Pro CS3
* Adobe Soundbooth CS3
* Adobe Encore CS3

For more info check out Ars Technica

Adobe rep Cara Cassidy stated in a blog post “We are announcing Creative Suite 3 on March 27th…However, the software will not ship until later in Spring 2007.”

The webcast on the 27th will take place at 3:30pm EST – and will reveal why this release is the biggest in Adobe’s history.

While the company has remained “hush hush” on the specific features and applications that are coming with CS3, they have started a small teaser campaign via a UK based website, and the teaser video below.

The teaser hints at a focus on colaboration across multiple users, but little else is known about the plans for CS3 at this time.

Adobe dropped Premiere from OS X in 2003, sighting Final Cut Pro as one of the reasons for Premiere’s disappearance from Macs.  Adobe makes it clear in the article that they are fully behind the Intel Macs, and feel that they can help Apple sell a lot of computers.

Click Here for MacWorld’s full article.

Apple Insider is reporting that Adobe Systems will be releasing a Beta of Photoshop CS3 to owners of a valid serial number for the current CS2 version of the photo editing software.

Apparently this will be the only CS application that will be available in Beta, and it will be the “standard” version of Photoshop CS3.  An “Advanced” version of the software appears to be in development that focuses on the video and science markets.

The Universal Binary is reported to “scream” on the new Intel Macs…which I’m sure most Photoshop users will be very happy to hear.

This info was reported EXCLUSIVELY by Apple Insider (they’re very proud of that fact, it seems – they mention it twice in the article), and you can click here to read their EXCLUSIVE article with all of it’s EXCLUSIVE words.

Well, that’s going to be changing soon because we’ll be seeing Creative Suite 3 in the second quarter of 2007 (March or April is the current rumored release date)
 Think Secret has some interesting details about the CS3 version of Photoshop that has this blogger EXTREMELY excited:

Photoshop CS3′s interface is said to closely resemble the look and feel of Adobe After Effects 7, with easy palette organization and brightness adjustment for the overall interface itself. Palettes can be moved, minimized, customized or collapsed down to a single icon with ease; even that familiar two-column toolbar can be converted into a narrower single column bar, if desired.

Another new feature substantially improving both workflow and raw performance is Live Filters, which effectively brings the dynamic editing features of Layer Styles to Filters. The pixel radius of a Gaussian Blur, for example, can be adjusted long after it has been applied with just a single mouse click. Sources report substantial performance improvements to the filters themselves, as well, and have speculated that Photoshop may now be tapping the GPU of the video card to help the CPU crunch filters.

With regard to non-destructive editing improvements, sources report that layers can now be saved as smart objects that the new editable filters can now be applied to.

With version CS3, Adobe seems to have improved on virtually every application Photoshop is employed to handle. Sources say that 3D objects can not only be imported now, but their textures can easily modified, as well. Video support has also been improved with Photoshop CS3, allowing a film strip to be imported and saved as a PSD file with markers that Adobe Premiere and After Effects can read. In addition, a new Analysis menu includes a number of measurement tools sure to please engineers and 3D artists, while the new built-in Device Library contains listings for virtually every phone and smart device in existence, allowing users to preview how their creations will appear on the screens of such products.

It has also been reported that this latest version of CS is faster and more responsive than ever.  We’ll be watching this closely as we get closer to release.