Future of Flex Revisited

I remember expressing my doubts about the Future of Flex and dissatisfaction with Adobe's work in RIA. So you can understand that I was intrigued to learn that Apple has decided to continue to not support Flash. In fact, it is alleged that Steve Jobs called Adobe a lazy company. Expectedly, the web was soon full of discussions and arguments between Flash lovers and Flash haters. Myself, I have used Flex for quite some time and now I am keenly following the HTML5 development. I feel that Flash does have a large reach. Even if one could use HTML5 for video streaming and delivering a variety of RIA applications, I will be keen to see how it manages to handle the challenge of drawing vector graphics and animation. Especially in analytics and similar applications, I don't see anybody replacing Flash based charts any time soon. Even most JavaScript based frameworks tap Flash for graphs and other highly interactive visual elements. Hence, with its reach and graphic potential, Flash remains a force to contend with. And Apple is simple not powerful enough to dislodge it, unless somebody can come up with a better alternative and promote it enough.

However, there is some truth to the charge that Adobe has gone a bit lazy. I, for one, will not question Adobe's technical competence. They are simply brilliant when it comes to desktop based graphics and multimedia development applications. In fact they make great IDEs for the same. But when it comes to the web-based application development, as an end user I am totally unhappy and unsatisfied with the way they have screwed up Flex development. They had a clear head-start but lost ground to JavaScript frameworks. This was, mind you, not due to their laziness but lack of closeness to customer needs. No wonder other technologies are fast elbowing it out. Apple may have gone a bit overboard, but it does point out that Adobe needs to change its approach towards RIA development or ultimately face being evicted out of this arena.