Adobe: call it Flash 11 already

I feel like I’ve been hearing about Flash 10.1 forever. The earliest public announcement I can find is October 5 of last year. That’s over 6 months of development for a point release.

Which is entirely understandable — it’s a “maintenance” release, in the sense that most of the goodness is under the covers. Hardware acceleration, better mobile, more platforms. Sounds like it will fix a lot of performance and reliability problems. Architectural changes are tedious and hard, and they need to be transparent to the user.

Given all the tit-for-tat and publicity that Flash is getting lately (con and pro), this is not a moment too soon. Flash’s credibility and future depends on this release.

So a bit of branding advice: send a message and call it Flash 11.

Windows 7 was a big refinement on an existing, but poorly-regarded, platform. They improved the product and came out confidently on the brand — again not a moment too soon. This is Flash’s moment.