Flash Development On Its Way Back to iPhone

Apple said Thursday that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines for the mobile operating system empowering thecompany's iPhone and iPad products. Apple's change of heart is all about wireless application neutrality and a welcome détente in the Apple versus Flash brawl, noted Al Hilwa, the director of application software development at IDC.

"It will be well received by the many developers who are skilled in languages and programming tools other than ObjectiveC -- the native language of the iOS SDK," Hilwa said.

"There is now hope that other programming languages can be used to bring applications to the iOS platform."

Adobe To Revamp iPhone Tool

For example, Adobe Systems said is once again working with key industry partners to bring full web browsing with Flash Player 10.1 to a broad range of devices. Adobe's Packager for iPhone -- a feature in the company's Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool -- "is available for developers to use today in Flash Professional CS5, and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases."

Developers currently can resurrect Adobe's Packager for iPhone tool and get working with the combinations of AIR and iOS versions that have come out since April, noted Adobe Systems Product Manager Christian Cantrell. "Everything still works perfectly -- it only took me about fifteen minutes to get my environment set up again," Cantrell wrote.

Currently, however, this workflow is far from ideal -- especially for developers who use Flash Builder. "Keep in mind that what you're seeing here represents a very low-level usage of the SDKs, and not what we were ultimately planning on releasing," Cantrell explained.

Once Adobe's tool is re-released, developers will potentially be able to bring thousands of Flash apps to the iPhone and the iPad, Hilwa observed.

"The development is important because it marks a slight shift in the tenor of the discussion around the application neutrality of wireless world," Hilwa explained.

Tearing Down The Wall

According to Adobe Systems, however, Apple's restriction on Flash content running directly in the browser on iOS devices currently remains in place, which means that users still cannot view Flash content or video on the Web when using the iPhone or iPad. "What is not clear from this announcement is whether this détente is open enough for Apple and Adobe to engage around bringing Flash to the iPhone," Hilwa said. "To enable this, Apple and Adobe likely need to partner so that Flash is pre-loaded on the devices or at least downloadable as a plug-in to the iOS browser."

Alternatively, Adobe could try to acquire or partner with a browser into which Flash could be directly integrated and then make the package available to users of Apple's mobile platforms. Still, "Adobe is not likely to invest in this unless it is assured that it is able to bring Flash to the iPhone," Hilwa said. "Thus an active partnership between Apple and Adobe may be the next milestone to watch."

More immediately, Apple's revised developer guidelines mean that other development languages such as Java and .NET can also now be supported without violating any rules. "The changes relax the ban translation layers that are often used in programming languages to make them portable," Hilwa said. "These layers -- sometimes called virtual machines -- have become ubiquitous in modern day programming environments such as Java and Microsoft's .NET."

The relaxation of Apple's developer guidelines also suggests that Silverlight may eventually become available on iOS devices. Hilwa said this would create "new and interesting possible mobile application strategies by the various mobile platform owners such as Oracle, Google and Microsoft -- who also own application development languages and tools."

Software Programming

Machine Code

The first generation of codes used to program a computer, was called machine language or machine code, it is the only language a computer really understands, a sequence of 0s and 1s that the computer's controls interprets as instructions, electrically.

Assembly Language

The second generation of code was called assembly language, assembly language turns the sequences of 0s and 1s into human words like 'add'. Assembly language is always translated back into machine code by programs called assemblers.

High Level Language

The third generation of code, was called high level language or HLL, which has human sounding words and syntax (like words in a sentence). In order for the computer to understand any HLL, a compiler translates the high level language into either assembly language or machine code. All software programming languages need to be eventually translated into machine code for a computer to use the instructions they contain.

But They Make It Easy For You

As the end user you do not see the code used to create computer software programs. However, you do use the results and the end products of today's software programming are soft programs that are easy to use by the consumer. Below you can find several software programs listed, each article discusses the history of software programming and the lives of the software programmers behind your favorite software programs.

Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering is the process of taking a software program apart and analyzing it with the intention to construct a new program that does the same thing without actually copying anything from the original and avoiding copyright or patent infringement.

Microsoft begins the friendly war with Apple.

In 1983, Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface (GUI) for its own operating system (MS-DOS), which had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. The product line has changed from a GUI product to a modern operating system over two families of design, each with its own codebase and default file system.

The 3.x and 4.x family includes MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me. The DOS-based Windows for Workgroups 3.11 achieved the breakthrough from 16- to 32-bit networking and 32-bit disk access. The notable change with Windows95 was from Program Manager to Explorer, but several os-components were rewritten and/or recompiled into 32-bit code for Windows 95.

Windows NT family started with NT 3.1 in 1993. Modern Windows operating system versions are based on the newer Windows NT kernel that was originally intended for OS/2. Windows runs on IA-32, x86-64 and Itanium processors. Earlier versions also ran on the Alpha, MIPS, Fairchild Clipper and PowerPC architectures. Some work was done to port it to the SPARC architecture. The NT kernel borrows many techniques from VMS. With NT4.0 in 1996 the shell changed from Program Manager to Explorer. CPU support included PowerPC, MIPS, and DEC Alpha for earlier versions of NT, but focuses on Itanium, 386, 486, x64 today.

The first PC with a Graphical User Interface !

On April Fool's Day, 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released the Apple I computer and started Apple Computers. The Apple I was the first with a single circuit board used in a computer.

The first home computer with a GUI or graphical user interface was the Apple Lisa.

A GUI (pronounced GOO-ee) is a graphical user interface to a computer. Most of you are using one right now. Take a look at your computer screen, the GUI provides you with windows, pull-down menus, clickable buttons, scroll bars, icons, images and the mouse or pointer. The first user interfaces to computers were not graphical or visually oriented; they were all text and keyboard commands. MS-DOS is an example of a text and keyboard method of computer control that you can still find on many PCs today.

The very first graphical user interface was developed by the Xerox Corporation at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the 1970s, but it was not until the 1980s when GUIs became widespread and popular. By that time the CPU power and monitors necessary for an effective GUI became cheap enough to use in home computers.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers, visited PARC in 1979 (after buying Xerox stock) and was impressed by the "Alto", the first computer ever with a graphical user interface. Several PARC engineers were later hired by Apple and worked on the Apple Lisa and Macintosh.

The Apple research team contributed much in the way of originality in their first GUI computers, and work had already begun on the Lisa before Jobs visited PARC. Jobs was definitely inspired and influenced from the technology he saw at PARC. Although Apple spent an incredible amount of time and money developing the Lisa, four years and $50 million, it turned out to be an unpopular system, due to its high price and few available software applications. Additionally, it was rather slow, as the large and complex operating system was a huge burden on the 5MHz CPU.

Apple designed the memory bus to be shared between the central processor and the video circuitry. This cut its potential performance from 8 Mhz to an effective 4 Mhz, and possibly even less due to other design constraints.

In addition to the external 5 Megabyte "Profile" hard drive, the Lisa has two internal non-standard 871K 5-1/4 inch "Twiggy" floppy drives.

Unfortunately, the floppy drives were slow and unreliable. Because of this, after selling about 6,500 Lisa computers, Apple offered an upgrade path for Lisa owners, replacing the two "Twiggy" drives with a single 400K 3-1/2 inch Sony floppy drive. The new drive holds half as much data as the old one, but is much more reliable.

This new Lisa is refered to as the Lisa 2/5, with the "5" representing the external 5 Meg Profile drive. The Lisa can be run without any hard drive, using floppy disks only, but this is a slow and tedious method, and most applications won't even fit on a single floppy disk.

Apple also released the Lisa 2/10, with an internal 10 Meg "Widget" hard drive. The System I/O board was redesigned to support the new hard drive, and the parallel port was lost in the process. The external Profile HD can not be used with this system unless a parallel port expansion card is installed.

The upgrade from the original Lisa 1 to the Lisa 2/5 was free to Lisa owners until June 1984, after which it cost $595.
To upgrade from the Lisa 1 to the Lisa 2/10 cost $2495.
An additional 512K of RAM could be purchased for $1495.

About a year later, Apple again changed the Lisa. It would now be known as the Macintosh XL, and would run the Macintosh operating system instead of the original Lisa OS.

Sales did pick-up, but Apple discontinued the Lisa line with 100,000 units sold after 2 years. By this time, the popular (and cheaper) Macintosh line of computers was available, of which Apple sold 70,000 in the first 3 months.

The Lisa was a victim of politics as well as economics. With the advent of the portable, robot-manufactured Macintosh, the handmade desktop-sized Lisa became too costly to produce and was dropped from the Apple line.

The Lisa is very technician-friendly - once the back panel is removed, the entire electronics assembly slides out in one piece, and the circuit boards are easily removed from their sockets.

The power supply is just as easy to remove and replace, it is held in place by a single thumb-screw, and slides out with just a tug.

The first operating system for PC !

In July 1980 IBM assigned Microsoft to develop a 16-bit operating system for the personal computer for the fee of 186,000 dollars. Although the company Digital Research of Gary Kildall allready had with CP/M 86 such a 16-bit version,but by circumstances no contract has been established with IBM. Microsoft did not have yet any operating system, Microsoft licensed CP/M from Digital Research in November 1977 for 50,000 dollars. Since Microsoft could not sell licenses, a corresponding agreement with the company Seattle Computer Products was reached for QDOS. QDOS is a 16-bit clone of CP/M and was finished by Tim Paterson in April 1980. At first Microsoft licensed QDOS for 25,000 dollars. After a licence agreement with IBM was signed, Bill Gates bought QDOS for 50,000 dollars in July 1981. How proved this was a very lucrative business. IBM delivered it on all IBM computers as PC DOS for the first time on the IBM 5150 PC, for all other ones the name MS-DOS was for OEM partner. MS DOS 1.0 consists of about 4,000 lines assembler code.

The command interpreter is integrated in the file command.com with the internal commands for MS-DOS. Together with the file io.sys for simple device routines like the access to the monitor, keyboard, fixed storage disks and interfaces as well as the booting code these form the base operating system. DOS works very hardware near.

MS-DOS was wide spread in 1982 when 50 companies licensed MS-DOS. Software and hardware manufacturers build on this binary standard at this time. In 1983, the success of the PC system was clear the desire for a graphical surface was rising. Microsoft corresponded to the trend and announced a graphical user interface named Windows in 1983. Many other systems lost her market relevance at this time. In 1984 the number of PC and MS-DOS resellers increased to over 200. IBM published the AT computer in August, this one should refine the market for personal computer with MS-DOS 3.0/3.1. MS-DOS is already spread worldwide on Intel x86 computers in 1985. The easy extendibility of the computer by numerous plug-in cards of third party manufacturers, relatively low acquisition costs and a strongly growing amount of applications was a reason for it.

1988 was MS-DOS established and had reached measured on the market share a monopoly in the DOS market. The number of the MS-DOS installations grew worldwide to about 60 million and surpassed all other systems with that amount. Almost every software company offered standard applications like word processing, calculation or also special solutions like measurement tools, CAD (Computer Aided Design) or image processing for MS-DOS. The PC manufacturers designed her systems compatible to MS-DOS except for few manufacturers.

MS-0 allows the DOS 5.use of the High Memory and Upper Memory Area for DOS itself, TSR programs and drivers. The most important new external commands in this version are DOSKEY, DOSSHELL, EDIT, EMM386 and LOADHIGH. UNDELETE can recover deleted files, UNFORMAT can undo the format of floppy disks. 2.88 mb floppy disk drives from IBM are now supported. The BASIC interpreter was improved in detail.

With the release of Windows 95 up to Windows ME MS-DOS has only a minory roll. It is installed for compatibility reasons for MS-DOS programs and makes Windows 95 up to ME start able. DOS programs being executed in the DOS box or directly in MS DOS before Windows start. Today it finds application for boot disks or similar purposes.

A New Beginning for PC!

In July of 1980, IBM representatives met for the first time with Microsoft's Bill Gates to talk about writing an operating system for IBM's new hush-hush "personal" computer. IBM had been observing the growing personal computer market for some time. They had already made one dismal attempt to crack the market with their IBM 5100. At one point, IBM considered buying the fledgling game company Atari to commandeer Atari's early line of personal computers. However, IBM decided to stick with making their own personal computer line and developed a brand new operating system to go with.

The secret plans were referred to as "Project Chess". The code name for the new computer was "Acorn". Twelve engineers, led by William C. Lowe, assembled in Boca Raton, Florida, to design and build the "Acorn". On August 12, 1981, IBM released their new computer, re-named the IBM PC. The "PC" stood for "personal computer" making IBM responsible for popularizing the term "PC".

The first IBM PC ran on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. The PC came equipped with 16 kilobytes of memory, expandable to 256k. The PC came with one or two 160k floppy disk drives and an optional color monitor. The price tag started at $1,565, which would be nearly $4,000 today. What really made the IBM PC different from previous IBM computers was that it was the first one built from off the shelf parts (called open architecture) and marketed by outside distributors (Sears & Roebucks and Computerland). The Intel chip was chosen because IBM had already obtained the rights to manufacture the Intel chips. IBM had used the Intel 8086 for use in its Displaywriter Intelligent Typewriter in exchange for giving Intel the rights to IBM's bubble memory technology.

This was the beginning of a new era, PC era!