Hasta La Gadget!

RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, a 7-inch tablet, is due for release April 19 — a bit behind schedule. Photo: Erik Malinowski/Wired.com

Research In Motion is preparing to release its much-awaited response to the iPad, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, a month behind schedule.

Among other reasons, Adobe Flash is probably contributing to the delay.

The PlayBook was supposed to be out the first quarter of 2011 but is now set to release April 19.

Some publications speculated on Thursday that the PlayBook’s late launch is related to touchscreen supply. The PlayBook also lacks a finished software development kit for making apps, and won’t have native mail, messaging and contacts apps.

Difficulty getting Flash to work properly on the PlayBook is probably another one of RIM’s woes.

Let’s take a look at the evidence. First, other tablet makers have had trouble with Flash. Motorola’s Xoom launched without it, despite the fact that Motorola highlighted Flash support as a key feature. Even though Flash Player 10.2 for Android is now available in the Android Market, the version meant for Android 3.0 Honeycomb (which the Xoom runs) is a prerelease version with significant limitations and lots of instability.

Second, sluggish performance and battery drainage have been problems for Flash before, and they’re the reason Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave for nixing Flash support on Apple’s mobile products.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab, which runs an earlier version of Android, is the only major tablet that currently supports a shipping version of the Adobe plugin.

Finally, Wired.com’s Erik Malinowski tried a PlayBook tablet at CES and reported that Flash performance proved to be a “choppy and (ironically) limiting experience.” RIM officials at the time were tight-lipped about the tablet’s expected battery life, saying only that it would be more than an hour. That was an early version of the tablet, but choppiness in one of its key features doesn’t bode well.

Without great Flash support, a PlayBook tablet would practically have nothing to do.

Last year RIM drummed up Flash support for the upcoming PlayBook, saying that it was going to deliver the full internet experience. That would, in theory, give the PlayBook an edge over the iPad.

“We’re not trying to dumb down the internet for a small mobile device,” says Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s CEO, during the PlayBook demonstration. “What we’re trying to do is bring up the performance and capability of the mobile device to the internet.”

In the video above, RIM demonstrates the PlayBook’s media viewer, which is written with Adobe Air, a platform based on Flash. So without a good Flash experience, RIM’s PlayBook would suffer a lot.

RIM’s planned April 19 launch lines up with Adobe’s claims that Flash will be available for tablets “within a few weeks of Android 3 Honeycomb devices becoming available.”

It’s been six weeks since Motorola released the Xoom, and April 19 is probably as long as Adobe can wait before Flash can no longer be considered “a few weeks” late.

Adobe and RIM didn’t respond to a request for comment on this story.

See Also:

• DOA: Blackberry PlayBook to Ship Without Mail, Messaging or …
• Video: Adobe Air, Flash Demonstrated on RIM PlayBook Tablet …
• RIM Unveils Tethered Tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook

You’d think that after all the bickering between Apple and Adobe about banning Flash from iOS, Adobe would never want to be seen touching an iPad in public. But alas, in the video above, Adobe demonstrates its flagship product, Photoshop, working on an iPad.

The Photoshop app is just a concept, so it’s unclear whether it will become a real product. But it’s refreshing to see how Photoshop might work on a tablet. The image takes over the screen, your fingers replace the mouse pointer, and all those ugly, squint-inducing tool boxes in the desktop version of Photoshop have been replaced with nice bubbly menu icons.

Let’s hope Photoshop eventually does land on tablets, including Android and the iPad. It would be a long-overdue makeover. Talk to any designer and they’ll agree that Photoshop is an atrociously unfriendly interface that has remained fundamentally unchanged for years. Designers and creative types would love Photoshop remade for tablets.

From Photography Bay

Armageddon averted. Exactly as promised, Adobe has rolled out a fix this week for the zero-day security vulnerability in Flash that had us sweating the world was about to come crashing to an end. It’s a somewhat circuitous route to getting your system patched up, however, as you’ll need to download an out-of-cycle update for Acrobat and Reader — the other software affected by this issue. Still, a small price to pay for protecting yourself from the evils of the internets.

[Thanks, Paul]

Adobe patches Flash flaw with Acrobat / Reader update originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today, Adobe Flash 10.2 will hit the Android Market for devices running Froyo, Gingerbread and Honeycomb, and by now you’re probably familiar with what it brings — increased performance for dual-core smartphones running Android 2.2 and Android 2.3, and the promise of seriously sped-up Flash content and better battery life for Android 3.0 tablets (not to mention Flash, period). Well, we’ve already spent a full day with the latest build of Flash 10.2 for Android and quizzed the company thoroughly about the release, and there are a couple surprises in store.

First off, you don’t absolutely need a dual-core phone to take advantage of Flash 10.2 — Adobe VP Danny Winokur told us, and we confirmed in testing, that there are slight performance improvements on earlier devices too. With our trusty Droid 2’s 1Ghz OMAP3 chip, we saw a slight but noticeable boost in framerate when playing a YouTube trailer at 480p, which admittedly only took took that particular video from “unwatchable” to merely “fairly jerky.” With the Tegra 2-toting Motorola Xoom, however, 480p videos ran perfectly smooth, even as the tablet had trouble rendering 720p content as anything but a series of images. However, Adobe says even that will change soon, as this beta release doesn’t take advantage of full hardware acceleration — it’s actually turned off right now. Though the Tegra 2 is natively decoding video, Adobe told us that hardware rendering and compositing will be added in a subsequent release, and when they are it “will bring 720p playback to a really smooth, enjoyable level.” We also noticed that phone temperatures seemed slightly cooler with Flash 10.2, which suggests better battery life. The other work-in-progress is Flash integration into Google’s Honeycomb browser, which presently has trouble detecting finger taps when Flash isn’t played full screen, but which will — Adobe hopes — play exactly the same inside and outside the browser when work on Flash 10.2 is complete. Sounds promising, no? Then why not download it yourself this evening and give it a go?

Flash 10.2 hits Android today, Adobe hopes for viewable 720p playback in a matter of weeks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Contrary to reports floating about the web, the Motorola Xoom isn’t getting Adobe Flash Player 10.2 today — rather, the tablet is getting updated to support Flash, which will actually arrive in one week. Adobe now says that Flash Player 10.2 will be ready to download from the Android Market on March 18th, supporting only Honeycomb tablets (in other words, just the Xoom) to start, and will eventually be available for Android 2.2 smartphones — again, contrary to what we’d been told, but we can’t really complain on that count supporting Android 2.2 (Froyo), Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and a beta version for Android 3.0.1 (Honeycomb) at release. Froyo devices won’t get the full battery-friendly Stage Video rendering pipeline and deep browser integration like their Honeycomb tablet brethren, but dual-core phones will reportedly see a performance improvement nonetheless, and there’s a new tweak that’ll let Flash web apps pull up a virtual keyboard if needed for full functionality. PR after the break.

Update: Adobe contacted us to clarify that Flash 10.2 is, in fact, headed to all three of the most recent versions of Android on March 18th — the Honeycomb tablet version will simply sport a beta label, and the smartphone builds will lack full functionality as described above.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Flash 10.2 beta hits Android Market on March 18th, supports Honeycomb, Gingerbread and Froyo (update)

Flash 10.2 beta hits Android Market on March 18th, supports Honeycomb, Gingerbread and Froyo (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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