“One product I believe WON’T be coming soon from Apple is a Flash plug-in for the iPhone… because of the strategic importance of Apple’s WebKit — the basis of the Safari browser on Mac, Windows, and now the iPhone and iPod Touch,” Robert X. Cringely writes for PBS. “WebKit, an open source web browser engine (not a web browser in its own right but all the parts you’d need to build a web browser), is key to Apple’s vision for devices like the iPhone and the iPod Touch that live somewhere between computers and phones and define where Apple is headed with its mobile strategy.”
“The point of WebKit for Apple was to define an open source standard for rendering web pages on all sorts of Internet-enabled devices. This also explains why Apple used KHTML instead of Gecko or its own web engine for Safari — even though KHTML was terrible at rendering web pages that were optimized for Internet Explorer. KHTML is the only rendering engine that can pass the Acid2 web-rendering test, and following a standard was more important to Apple than correctly rendering poorly written web pages,” Cringely writes.
“Which brings us back to the lack of a Flash player or plug-in for the iPhone, which is the single greatest reason why we do not yet see true third-party iPhone applications. Had Apple allowed a Flash player on the iPhone, it risked having Flash — rather than the Apple-preferred Ajax — become the dominant iPhone web application development environment,” Cringely writes. “I’m not saying that a Flash player or plug-in won’t eventually appear, but Apple won’t allow it to happen until Cupertino feels the WebKit/iPhone/iPod Touch platform is established well enough to stand on its own.”
“The next logical WebKit product for Apple, it seems to me, is a much larger version of the iPod Touch. It would be Apple’s first tablet computer and, while they’ll still claim it runs OS X, Apple WON’T call it a Mac,” Cringely writes.
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mtnmnn” for the heads up.]
This guy needs to stop with his Apple predictions..
He’s been so far off the mark for a very long time..
I think that most Flash development is pretty sloppy. Bad splash pages. Endless crap Flash sites. Not to mention how many ‘rich media’ ads are delivered via Flash on content websites. No Flash on my iPT keeps my browsing lean and mean.
Good developers will find a way around Flash.
Hmm… The iphone needs flash though, because I’m always going to a restaurant website to order TOGO, and the dang menu is in flash. Not to mention it would be nice to get some real games on this thing. I bet the flash performance would be so miserable, that it would barely be worth it though. And then we’d have lots of flash ad popups all over the place.
yah, forget flash. if my iPhone ever did get flash support I’d be looking for ways to disable it.
cringely makes a big deal about the coming iTablet “killing” kindle. I was unaware that something that was stillborn needed to be killed.
It would be nice if apple sold ebooks on iTunes though.
I want the flash video player to exist on the iPhone. The other aspects of flash are garbage. Who wants to look at blinking, dancing web ads?
Unless you’re submerged in very cold water, I don’t think you should hold your breath for anything that’s going to take longer than a couple of minutes to arrive.
Yo, though x 2 – minus games though.
At least this time he is backing his predictions up with a well thought out line of reasoning.
Actually, he’s usually better than 50%.
I think they could make one, but I am not sold on it yet. I think it would be great, but they would have to get it in a a good price point. Not cheap “mind you” but something that is in line with the rest of thier line.
If they market it as not a “Mac” much like they do the iPhone, then they are looking into a problem of having a device that is a computer, but with no software. That isn’t a problem with iPhone because it is a phone. The phone is the killer app. What would the killer app for this device be?
MN
Another reason Apple should try to buy Adobe?
Good! Flash is lame. I hope Apple never adds it so flash fades to obscurity.
Err. Everything Apple does sucks.
There ‘Realist’ I said it before you.
Now go troll elsewhere.
Flash IS coming to the iPhone.
@Yo
Flash performance would indeed be miserable on the iPhone, but it’s pretty miserable in the browser as well.
Try using Safari on a regular Mac, and then turn off the Flash and try again.
The speed improvement is quite astounding. Flash is a crap plug-in that will eventually fade away due to the efforts of great companies like Apple and the work of the open source community.
I enjoyed not having flash on my iPhone so much I removed it from my primary computer.
Apple is NOT going to acquire Adobe. If they tried, MS would counter offer. Who do you think is going to win THAT fight?
Well some company already jumped the gun on a Mac tablet. If you check out Other World Computing at http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ModBook/, it would seem someone is repackaging Mac Books as tablets for an extra G and a half with pen computing hand writing recognition and built in GPS. Obviously for a niche markets like land surveying and equipment delivery and transportation.
Mr. X is sometimes right on but mostly off base about all things Apple. I’m not sure about this one though – it could go either way. But Flash is a hog – try using it with Edge and it will SUCK. Maybe a future 3G iPhone + Flash will make more sense.
Then there are some that have made the point that Flash may not have as much relevance going forward because of other efforts, but that’s a tough one to assess as well. Flash is bad but there’s a lot of it out there.
@bobchr
That modBook has been out for sometime now, but I really haven’t seen much discussion of it since it came out. You are correct – great for niche markets, but not a consumer device.
That’s what scares me about Apple coming out with a tablet. I just don’t see it making inroads in the consumer market. Yeah, it would be cool, but cool isn’t always useful to the consumer. Who knows. Now there’s talk from credible resources like CNBC talking about a subnotebook with flash memory instead of a hard drive. We’ll have to wait until Steve’s keynote to see.
fm
As much as I understand Apple’s reasoning, Flash and Shockwave are enough of standards to warrant considering support for. Or at least some placeholder that doesn’t prevent the whole page from working…
Good! After the crap Adobe is pulling with H264 they don’t deserve to be on the iPhone. Sorry, this is a bit of a sore spot with me.
They say “Hey we support standard H264 HD content now, aren’t we great” but then they keep the delivery mechanism proprietary. In other words all the thousands of video we have streaming from Darwin Streaming Servers can’t be played from Flash Player. Even though Flash supports the fricking format…unless of course we buy their server at the new lower price of $1000 a pop that uses a non-standard streaming protocol which will lock out other players like QuickTime and VLC. Let’s see…1800 servers @ $1000…WOW!
Darwin Streaming Server is free.
$1,800,000 vs free
Adobe is Crafty.
All this is doing is making us use Flash less and less and Web 2 techniques more and more. And the Flash Player video user experience ain’t that good when you compare it to QT. Grrrrrrr
@ Ferf MuckmeyerI think if Apple came out with a tablet they would not use the Mac Book form factor. A smaller thinner version of the old Newton with multi Gig USB2 jump drive bays scanner attachment a cash register program and wifi and cell phone functions installable. As I go through Apple stores I notice the of line sales personnel using a windows CE version of this device, which was manufactured by a company I used to work for (Symbol Tech) since taken over by Motorola. Having been involved in the design and manufacture of these devices I know that the windows component is prone to typical failures and viruses. Apple could capture a huge vertical market segment with ruggedized versions that can work with a stylus and fingers. The scanner portions can be bought from Motorola. This is how M$ can claim the most operating systems in the business world with dedicated machinery like this. A flexible system like this can be configured as an ultra light with projection and presentation functions for the business set Scanner and data collection for the sales set, automatic inventory validation with the use of SAP sales analysis and order resources as well as MRP from SAP.
I haven’t updated the new Flash plug-in because in Leopard, Disk Utilities still doesn’t work right because Flash ALWAYS corrupts your permissions.
And the last thing the iPhone needs is a buggy, slow Safari.
In fact, I’m convinced that Adobe released this update just to screw with Leopard.
Adobe is a terrible company that makes fairly awful products and monopolistic prices (could Photoshop be any more expensive and cumbersome?).
Screw them I say.