Missing a point here. The $600 Adobe license for the latest development software is in addition to the hardware. The corresponding development software from Apple is free as long as you have the proper hardware.
In my experience, cross-platform development tools are never ideal, so I understand the push from Apple to use native tools. If I wanted to do multi-platform development on a tight budget - I’d seriously consider a dual boot OSX & Windows systems so that I could develop and test each natively. Still though, as Cerowyn’s firm found - the costs of multi-platform development can be significant and if you can’t support it fully, it is wise to drop a platform.
You never get additional platform support for ‘free’. Even when you have Adobe CS for web development, it is not free to get a smartphone app as well. You must also have the smartphones and infrastructure to test the app.
As other posters have noted, it was true until very recently for music (January), and continues to hold true for movies, tv shows, and audiobooks. I’m not “making shit up”, your own link appears to confirm what I am saying regarding video files:
If you downloaded season 1 of The Office from the ITMS, could you play those videos in VLC without illegally removing the DRM? On a competing MP3 player? Have you personally done this?
I think most people who think like you do already didn’t buy it. And there are probably others who did buy it, but, due to that process where we have to justify our purchases, and cannot admit, even to ourselves, the downfalls of said said product.
The person who will return something that costs $500 because they are dissatisfied is rare. For some reason, we want to make ourselves satisfied rather than admit the purchase was a mistake.
My four months out of date information on music and accidentally using the word “computer” when I should have simply said device aside, I was correct. Not too shabby for someone just making it up. Are you seriously contending that I didn’t simply misspeak, but am completely ignorant of the fact that iTunes is available on Windows?
Not that it matters, as I’m a compulsive liar with a need to slam Apple, facts be damned, but I own two iPods (Touch and Classic), a Macbook Pro, a powerbook G4, and a windows 7 PC with iTunes installed.
Tone it down. There’s no need for the disrespectful attitude you’re bringing.
Really? I have a Creative Zen music player that won’t play iTunes format, but all I have to do is convert a file to mp3 (which I can do fairly easily in iTunes) and then it transfers to the Zen with no problem.
There are a number of options for creating SWFs (the format that the Flash player plays). While Adobe’s Creative Suite is the best known and most visible, other options include:
Sothink SWF Quicker ($85)
The open-source project SWFmill (FREE, AS2-based)
Adobe’s free, open-source Flex SDK (FREE, AS3-based)
The open-source project Haxe (FREE, uses its own language)
Of particular note is that one of those free, open-source options is provided by Adobe itself. It includes a compiler, written in Java so it’s cross-platform, that lets you compile AS3 code into a SWF. Combine it with a free IDE like FlashDevelop, and you can produce some good stuff.
I think that his point was not about creating SWF files, but developing Flash applications. AFAIK, that is what you need CS to accomplish. If you have just an SWF file, you are still dependent on the Flash runtime - which is not open.
What do you mean by Flash applications? If you mean embedding something in a webpage like a Flash games, that’s a SWF. You can make them without having to fork over $600.
If you mean something that a user downloads and runs locally, those are AIR applications. You can also make them without having to fork over $600, as Adobe’s released free tools to build those, too.
As for still being dependent on the free but closed source Flash runtime, that’s true. There’s at least one effort to make an open source alternative, but that’s still a work in progress. Of course with iPad apps, your application is similarly dependent on various closed source Apple libraries – and those don’t have the benefit of being freely available and cross-platform like the Flash runtime does.
Sorry, I’m not being clear enough - or I have misunderstood Flash development.
I thought that the post I cited was claiming that CS5 was the only way to develop and cross compile an iPad Flash application which would work without the Flash plugin/runtime on the iPad. His point was contrasting CS5 against the free tools from Apple.
The post has been updated to reflect other tools for SWF creation - as you note, but he holds to his original point. Is he still wrong?
