Flash CS5 Blues

For months now we, the CurrentMarketing digital geeks, have been anxiously awaiting the release of Adobe’s Flash CS5. I can still remember huddling around my iMac with the Bouv, watching Lee Brimelow (the Adobe Platform Evangelist) work his magic with Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone compiler. It was touted as one of the biggest and most anticipated features of the CS5 release, and (at least to us) seemed too good to be true.
We were overjoyed at the thought of creating iPhone applications without having to break a sweat learning Objective C! “What are you gonna try and build?” we’d ask each other, like kids with a new set of Legos. All day we’d gab about how tools like Open Plug’s Elips Studio and Adobe’s Flash CS5 might expand our reach into the mobile market.
Then Steve Jobs put the smack down. In the latest iPhone SDK user agreement, it states very clearly that developing in any non-Apple-approved language is a violation of terms. Long story short: if you’re not using Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, you’re wasting your time.
So today we’re back where we started, staring dejectedly at three fat Objective C manuals on our bookshelf. It’s said that when one door closes, another one opens. Maybe this is just the motivation we need to start sticking our noses into those books so we can crank out something spectacular! Me, I’d just be happy to run some “hello world” scripts!
Truth be told, even after everything I still can’t wait to get my hands on CS5. It includes all sorts of great improvements including a new ActionScript editor, On-stage video scrubbing and XML based FLA source files. So Flash Professional CS5 will definitely improve my workflow. I’m not sure I’ll be forgiving Steve Jobs anytime soon though.
Learn more about Flash Professional CS5 here.
Read Lee Brimelow’s response to Apple’s bad news here.