Adobe upgrades its Digital Publishing Suite with iPhone viewer, improved social media features

Engadget - Between rolling out Creative Suite 6, Creative Cloud and a new video platform for broadcasters, Adobe's been mighty busy lately. If that's not evidence enough that the outfit is making good on its promise to restructure around digital media, hear this: the company just announced a slew of enhancements to its Digital Publishing Suite (DPS), which Conde Nast and others use to format magazines for mobile devices. For starters, publishers now have a way to tailor content specifically for the iPhone, just as they can for the iPad, Kindle Fire and Android tablets. So far, we know Conde Nast will be using this tool to build a modified edition of The New Yorker, though Conde Nast hasn't announced when it will become available for download. Meanwhile, art departments used to working in InDesign can now take a single a layout and repurpose it across multiple devices. Similarly, DPS is now integrated with Adobe Edge, which means publishers can create HTML5 animations and then easily port them over to their digital editions.    

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Third betas of Adobe Flash 11.3, AIR 3.3 give peeks at low-lag audio and deeper iOS support

Engadget -

Adobe's famous desktop browser plugin may be looking forward to a 2013 overhaul, but that doesn't mean it isn't out to improve itself in the here and now. Flash Player's 11.3 beta, for instance, rolls in low latency audio support through NetStream, designed specifically to cut back audio lag in cloud gaming. The beta also introduces support for complete keyboard control when in full-screen mode, background Flash updating on Macs, and a Protected Mode for Firefox that keeps rogue Flash files from compromising Windows PCs using Vista or later.          More

Steve Jobs warned of mobile Flash's shortcomings. Adobe should have listened.

SAN FRANCISCO - MAY 13: A full page ad by Adobe 

Systems is displayed on the back of the San Francisco 

Chronicle business section May 13, 2010 in San 

Francisco (Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

CNET - In April, 2010, Steve Jobs devoted about 1,700 words to a public postripping Adobe’s Flash to shreds. His most cutting comments concerned the mobile version of Flash.

-”In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.”

-”Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath.”

In other words, Adobe was offering a mediocre technology that wasn’t able to stand up to the demands of smartphone users – or at least those who were not in the mood to smash their heads against the wall when their pages crapped out because of Flash’s idiosyncrasies. The missive was written to rationalize Apple’s decision to no longer allow apps compiled with Flash to run on the iPhone, iPod, or the iPad.

Adobe press release

ZDNet: Flash is dead: Long live HTML 5?

Adobe was understandably aghast and responded with a public relations offensive, framing this as a question of industry politics and open access with Apple playing the role of the heavy.

“We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen,” Kevin Lynch, the company’s chief technology officer, wrote at the time in a public post. For good measure, he added that those who suggested HTML “as eventually supplanting the need for Flash” were wrong. “I don’t see this as one replacing the other, certainly not today nor even in the foreseeable future.”

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Flash Bug Allows Miscreants to Remotely Operate Your Web Cam

Wired - Adobe Systems has announced it’s in the process of fixing a security vulnerability in Flash that would allow malicious web sites to remotely operate a user’s webcam and microphone.

The vulnerability is on Adobe’s server side, not on client-side software, and therefore does not require users to update their software.

Adobe told CNET it was hoping to have the fix done by the end of this week.

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OS X Lion disables Flash hardware acceleration, breaks some Adobe apps

Geek.Com - The release of OS X 10.7 Lion has for the most part been a positive event for end users on a Mac. That is, unless you use Adobe software, or are Adobe trying to support people using your software on their Mac.

It seems that Apple has decided it really doesn’t like Adobe that much and has broken a whole range of their products with its release. Probably the biggest kick in the teeth is to do with that bit of software that Apple has already banned from iOS devices: Flash Player.


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