It hasn’t been the most fun of years for Adobe. Despite still claiming over a 90 percent saturation rate online, the once great software manufacturer began to look like it would soon be forced to admit defeat as its flagship Flash program continues to lose its appeal to a young and untested HTML5 program. It is the battle of the aging gunfighter versus the hot young kid that is looking to take out a legend and wear the crown. But it looks like Flash just bought some new guns, and the program is not yet ready to go gentle into that goodnight.
Today at the Google I/O conference, Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen introduced Flash 10.1, an upgraded program that Adobe hopes will stem the growing tide of criticism that Apple is at the peak of.
The new Flash 10.1 will be a mobile application that Adobe claims will support touch screens, conserve battery life, and take advantage of faster mobile processors- all of which were complaints that Steve Jobs mentioned during his open letter to Adobe explaining why he thought they sucked.
One drawback is that the program will require Android 2.2 “Froyo” as a minimum requirement. The development of Froyo has been public knowledge for months, but today marked its official debut.
Although the new Flash will directly combat many of the criticisms leveled at it by Apple, criticisms that Microsoft later echoed, it seems unlikely that Adobe and Apple will mend fences anytime soon despite Adobe’s most recent ad that is either saying that they still love Apple, or it is mocking Steve Jobs’ company, depending on your point of view.
