Apple Tablet! What does this mean for Flash Developers?
The Apple Tablet, rumoured to be called the iSlate, is rumoured to be announced January 27th. Yes I know I said rumoured twice in that last sentence but let’s face it we all know its coming! But what we don’t know is whether it will run a variation of iPhone OS or full on OSX. Odds our in my opinion it will run iPhone OS as it’s the best money maker thanks to the app store and this device will not be designed as a replacement for your computer. Fortunately for us however, it doesn’t matter whether is iPhone OS or OSX.
Flash Cs5 will publish to the iPhone platform and with a few tweaks here and there I’m sure that adobe will fix it up to do the tablet. If they leave this until the release of CS6 I may just go on an adobe hunting killing spree! On the other hand though, if it’s running full on OSX then we have AIR 2.0 or Flash. Regardless of the OS it will undoubtedly feature multi-touch and accelerometer which we will be able to access through the new AS3 extensions that Flash CS5 will bring us.
How will this be different from both the iPhone and Mac’s then?
This will come from how the user adopts the system, with the intermittent release of Flash CS5 a range of developers and designers will surely be publishing for these platforms, and the great thing is you can publish to all of them at the same time by making your stage object positions and scale dynamic to the resolution of the screen and platform that you are using.
But what about Safari?
I think that Apple will be heavily scrutinised if they don’t feature Flash Player into Safari on the tablet as it will be a powerful device with a reasonably large screen and will no doubt be capable of it. Apple have kind of got away with it with the iPhone due to it being a phone, but with many phone OS’s featuring Flash Player in the browser they can’t hide for long. If apple to feature Flash Player into the tablet and it runs a variation of iPhone OS then I believe it will be inevitable that they will be forced to feature it in iPhone OS 4.0, which may have a announcement and release on the same day!
Also Flash CS5 developing will be great for iPhone developing, but for more complex designs you’re better off going with Objective-C, the reason for this is that although Native Flash Apps for the iPhone will be great, they will lack in performance as proved by the existing apps on the App Store. Undoubtedly the tablet will feature a much higher performance graphics chip and processer than the iPhone therefore quality Flash published games could be a possibility for the tablet.
Regardless of what happens next week it will be important to us all.
[Don't forget to follow Engadget and Gizmodo for the release on January 27th 10AM Pacific!]
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