“Don’t hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe’s Flash software: Apple’s terms-of-service agreement prohibits it,” Brian X. Chen reports for Wired.
Those waiting for Flash on the iPhone “may be waiting in vain, based on Apple’s TOS and the company’s history of tightly controlling applications for its smartphone platform,” Chen reports. “Allowing Flash — which is a development platform of its own — would just be too dangerous for Apple, a company that enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it. Flash has evolved from being a mere animation player into a multimedia platform capable of running applications of its own. That means Flash would open a new door for application developers to get their software onto the iPhone: Just code them in Flash and put them on a web page. In so doing, Flash would divert business from the App Store, as well as enable publishers to distribute music, videos and movies that could compete with the iTunes Store.”
Chen reports, “‘An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise,’ reads clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement, which was recently published on WikiLeaks. ‘No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).’”
Chen reports, “Side from taking software control away from Apple, Flash would introduce a slew of other potential headaches as well. Flash apps could hurt battery life, suck up the graphics-processing unit’s power, use an inordinate amount of memory, or potentially introduce security risks. Apple has plenty of customer complaints to address about the iPhone; the last thing it needs is to add Adobe and Flash to the pile.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
We’d rather have a flash for iPhone’s camera than Adobe’s Flash.
Web developers will stop using Flash for video and adapt their other Flash content when they, or more likely the people who are paying them, decide they’d like to reach tens of millions of affluent iPhone users.
This is why Adobe is giving away Flash for mobiles to every mobile device maker. They’re scared that a good portion of that money they paid for Macromedia will end up being wasted if Apple breaks the Flash juggernaut with iPhone, iPod touch and, ahem, future devices.
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