Android 2.2 to support flash

In an interview with The New York Times, Google’s Andy Rubin revealed that the upcoming version of the Android mobile operating system will fully support Flash technology. Code named Froyo, Adobe showed us Android 2.2 with Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One last month.

In a world where every company seems to find excuses not support flash, I find it incredibly exciting to hear that this is no longer a stereotype of the mobile world. The Wii had a very outdated version of Flash, the DSi had none at all, your average phone has none, and even high tech, and I use the term high tech loosely, pieces of media equipment such as the iTouch or iPhone don't support it. It was beginning to seem as if companies have a gripe with flash, and were deliberately trying to kill it's success at the expense of their own products. Perhaps, on the other hand, one company that happens to be a leader in the smartphone race has a bone to pick with, like, everyone.

Needless to say, I am officially wishing I could have an Android phone, specifically one running version 2.2 which will support flash 10. I think Apple has dug themselves one heck of a hole at this point. Microsoft, Google, and Adobe are now on their grudge list and considering two of these companies are very powerful web forces (Google, Adobe) and the other is coming out with what is supposed to be a revolutionary new smartphone (Microsoft) they have plenty of competition with a nice huge advantage over them now.

I can't speak for him, but if I were in charge of decisions at Apple, I'd be scared right about now. Android 2.2 officially has a major advantage over it's main competitor, the iPhone.

Windows 7 Phone details

In my last blog post I talked about Windows 7 Phone not having Copy&Paste or Multi-tasking.

Conveniently I found another post that clarifies one of these two issues.

Link

In this article the issue where Microsoft does not plan to include Multi-tasking in the Windows 7 Phone is clarified. The good news is that that it was a false rumor, and that multi-tasking is planned for the Windows 7 Phone. What things will be able to be multi-tasked may be limited, however, multi-tasking will infact be available.

For instance, you will be able to listen to music and use other apps at the same time.

For more info, please read the original article, or this quote:


"Microsoft itself makes use of multitasking in the operating system. For users and developers, an application pauses when the user switches to another program, and the first one could be shut down by the operating system to reclaim CPU or memory resources.
"This was not a quick decision," says Charlie Kindel, partner group program manager for the Windows Phone 7 Developer Experience. Microsoft looked at what it could take to create and use background processing on the phone for developers and users, and the potential impact on the all-important user experience. The conclusion: A lot of infrastructure would have to be built and a lot of added complexity would result.
At the same time, Microsoft executives say the Windows Phone 7 platform provides a range of integrations and services for applications that provide the kind of multitasking users want. For example, if you start a music track on the WP7 device, it will continue playing if you switch from the music application to another one. The "live tiles" in the UI -- the intelligent rectangles and squares that can be linked to phone or cloud-based services and applications -- coupled with Microsoft's free push notification service for Windows Phone provide a way for developers, their apps and services to continually notify and update phone-based programs, for example, with the latest scores from the NCAA tournament.
The goal, Kindel says, is to ensure "We control the quality of the overall user experience.""

The lack of Copy&Paste was unfortunately not discussed in this article. I did however find an article that discussed the lack of Copy and Paste.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/191825/windows_phone_7_copy_and_paste_mia.html

"Microsoft revealed this week at its Mix 10 conference for Microsoft-oriented Web developers that its forthcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile OS will not include a clipboard capability for copy-and-paste operations -- at least not in the first version.
"Windows Phone 7 Series will not initially offer copy-and-paste; instead, we try to solve the most common uses for copy-and-paste via single-tap action," says Casey McGee, a senior marketing manager in Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business group. "For example, people often want to take an address and view it on a map, highlight a term in the browser, and do a search or copy a phone number to make a call. Instead of the user manually doing a copy and paste in these scenarios, we recognize those situations automatically and make them happen with just one touch. In our early testing, people have been pleased with this approach, but we're always listening to feedback and will continue to improve our feature set over time based on what we hear.""



What I see here is Microsoft trying to immitate something Apple did... The problem with this is that nobody liked tihs "feature" on the Iphone either. On the bright side, if you read the above quote there is a ray of sunshine. Number one is that Microsoft implied in their statement that they may add copy and paste in a later version

Number 2 didn't appear in the above quote, because it is said later in the article. Developers will be able to add copy&paste functionality to their apps. This to me sais that if Microsoft doesn't wise up, a developer inevitably will and implement copy&paste in say a web browser, where it's most important to people.

"Casey also notes that developers are free to implement copy-and-paste in their own applications"

In conclusion, the future of the Windows Seven Phone looks fairly bright.

One thing of note, however, is that the Windows Seven Phone will not support flash. From what I understand, flash can severely reduce battery life. To this I say to Microsoft, here's a better option. Include Flash compatibility, simply add an option to disable or enable it, so that people can choose.

The option is better than not having a choice.