I asked three publishers, a.k.a., “Flashmasters” what they thought about the fact that Adobe Flash won’t run on the iPad. Many children’s interactive products depend on Flash, including Disney’s Club Penguin, StarFall.com and Giggles. I’ll post this on our blog, in case any other publishers want to jump in.

Scott Traylor, CEO, 360KID
In the 20 or so years that I’ve been making interactive products, I’ve seen tools come and go, and used almost all of them.  What I’ve found to be most annoying about these tools is that, for the most part, they are not made with an engineer in mind. They are made to sell to the largest development population possible to create the largest revenues/profits possible. In the heat of a project, you will find you all kinds of wacky issues will appear. The most dreaded is the memory leak.  There are a number of other specific software needs that these tools don’t provide, but memory leaks prevent me from shipping product. I also find that these tools are also huge processor hogs on computers.  Ever leave a browser page open with a Flash asset running and hear your laptop fan start up?  Does this mean that I don’t use these tools or don’t even like these tools? No. More than 80% of our work every day is done in Flash.  When I used to teach, I had one concept I would introduce early to try to dispel the myth that “a hammer is a hammer.” Some hammers are shiny, some hammers sleek, but choose the hammer that’s best for the project you wish to build. Flash is a good hammer, but it’s not great for building everything. Yes, I feel there are shananigans going on between Apple and Adobe, but I also understand that the processing power of an iPad is finite. Supporting a tool that monopolizes processing power on any platform is problematic.  There’s a lot of great Flash product out there created by developers who know their stuff. Is that reason enough to support Flash on the iPad? Sadly, I have to say no. Not when I see the volumes of other Flash product that stinks, created by novice developers that don’t know how to make savvy software.  Others will strongly disagree with my position, but this is what my experience as a developer tells me.

Tim Leverette, CEO of Leveractive, LLC
I feel a bit like a child who is being unnecessarily traumatized by two fighting parents, that I both love… Flash has been a pretty enduring tool, even with it’s shortcomings. I think that blaming the tool for all memory and playback issues is not looking at the entire picture.  There are definitely memory issues with Flash in general, but on top of that there are many designers who do not know how to use the tool correctly. So I just want to be sure we’re not always blaming the hammer every time we hit our thumbs. I also want to point out that there are two different issues and discussions that are often getting interchanged here.  There is the issue of supporting Flash via the browser on the iPad and iPhone platforms. The second issue  (the one I care most about) is about supporting Flash exported iPhone Apps via the new Flash CS5 exporter. The new Flash CS5 iPhone exporter exports native iPhone code – it is no longer flash.  I am worried about Apple shutting down the new capability of Flash CS5 to export to iPhone/iPad App. Many people out there are using arguments against the CS5 exported self-contained iPhone Apps issue that are only valid against issue #1 – the browser-based Flash issues. It’s easy to confuse the two, but I feel very important not to.

Karina Linch, Senior Vice President, Product Management, BrainPop
This is an issue BrainPOP has been following closely. BrainPOP has a featured free movie everyday, which can be viewed on our homepage, embedded into class blogs, or accessed through our free iPad app. For example, on World Book and Copyright Day, and you can view our free copyright movie and take our copyright quiz on BrainPOP’s website, or on your iPad via the BrainPOP Featured Movie App. Visit http://www.brainpop.com/featured to see today’s featured free movie, get the embed code here: http://www.brainpop.com/educators/featured_movie/ or download the iPad app here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brainpop-featured-movie/id364894352?mt=8 We believe there’s great potential for mobile devices in the hands of students.

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OK, so what do you think?

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