“What wasn’t good enough for Steve Jobs seems just fine for Microsoft, as it takes this opportunity to embed a version of Adobe’s streaming video technology into its future mobile Web browsers, right alongside Adobe’s rival Silverlight,” Scott M. Fulton reports for BetaNews.
MacDailyNews Take: What else is new? “Good enough” (even when it isn’t) is Microsoft’s mantra. Apple doesn’t settle for “good enough.”
Fulton continues, “”More and more, Microsoft is making a very visible effort to play nice, or at least nicer, by making room for its rivals alongside its own technology. This morning, it let Adobe hail the latest move rather than horde the megaphone, announcing that Adobe is licensing its Flash Lite mobile graphics platform to Microsoft for use, apparently, in a future mobile Web browser.”
Full article here.
For just a few dollars you can keep the DOJ & anti-trust lawyers off your back.
Wow. How exciting. All 17 Windoze Mobile Lusers will now have Flush on their “Smart” phones.
Yawn.
prepare for a one day spike from .0001% to .0004% on the old internet usage graphs from win-mobile.
Nothing like a common threat to create allies. Once again M$ makes an announcement instead of actually doing something. “Why I’m gonna…”
…a little too late.
More people would care if they had licensed the Fleshlight instead.
This just in:
Campbell’s Soups has announced a partnership with Microsoft to use empty soup cans and string to enhance phones using Windows Mobile.
And why didn’t Microsoft make the announcement itself? Because it’s no big deal.
Not having Flash on my iPhone is somewhat annoying, simply because so many websites use it. But so do an awful lot of ads, so I don’t have to see those either. And Flash takes long enough to download to my desktop/laptop, so I don’t even want to try navigating a bunch of Flash sites on my iPhone.
Wish the iPhone would just convert swf formats into H.264 behind the scenes and play them…no user interaction required. Ball and chain or not, our company did its web site with the content area playing swf files using yes, Keynote and Imageready exports…everybody already has a browser that will play flash, so it becomes the default, like it or not.
exactly, bizlaw, exactly.
I think Greenpeace ought to jump their asses for not making it a solar flash lite….
Flash Lite is nearly useless from what I’ve read. What is it for? It apparently doesn’t allow you to view Flash 9 content and everything out there is always asking you to upgrade to the latest version. So what gives?
Are there Flash Lite websites? A lot of sites with Flash 8 still?
This is just two losers getting together, after being jilted.
Why would MS license Flash, while it’s developing Silverlight? Seems stupid even for MS, unless Silverlight on a mobile platform sucks.
We can let M$FT horde the megaphone as long as Apple gets to hoard it….
Flash Light !!!! That was a George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic song… Flash Light !!!
C’mon Mr Jobs, let’s get funky with the iPhone…
Flash Lite will enable M$ OS phones, and customers, to enjoy streaming advertisements. Now all M$ needs is away to steer their customers to specific sites so M$ can make ad revenue. That’s about all Flash Lite is good for.
As Bob Dylan once said – “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
Who wants to take bets on this:
Microsoft will copy the iPhone hardware and gesture-based, software user interface.
the iphone SERIOUSLY lacks in video and media play back ability. SERIOUSLY. Only thing you can watch is people putting firecrackers up their noses on youtube.
Apple needs to stfu about problems with Flash and just let Adobe do their thing.
I want to see and hear WMV as well. It’s stupid that I cannot.
Try TinyTube, thelonious.
http://tinytube.net
Has around 15 Flash sites you can stream on your iPhone via EDGE and WiFi.
@”Dud CD” and “theloniousMac”
The reason why the iPhone plays back only certain, non-proprietary formats, is because because playback for those specific formats is heavily hardware accelerated, to help prolong the iPhone’s battery life and conserve its processing power.
Rather the iPhone wasting its time converting video codecs back and forth, it requires those formats up front. This has the end result of providing longer battery life and a better overall user experience. And as a side-effect, it forces websites to use non-proprietary formats for their media. A short-term hassle for the long-term greater good.
MW “lower”: as in, what Apple isn’t willing to do with their standards.
Okay, let me get this straight – an operating system is licensing a user interface technology from a document-centric software company?
Um, did the last intellectual property guy turn out the lights when he left?
This is consistent with the Ballmer era – why bother to invent anything, just buy it. Keep up the good work, Steve.
Microsoft still has no taste. Film at 11.
-jcr
License Flash Lite? Hell, I just go to the hardware store and buy one. I like the ones that hold 6 D-cell batteriers. Very bright.
They certainly make a beautiful couple. I’m just a little scared about how their children will turn out.
Oh, what’s that you say? They’ve been neutered years ago? Whew! That was a close one. That gene pool didn’t need a lifeguard, it just needed a little vasectomy.
Gabriel is right. The only time my G4 Al Powerbook’s fan comes on is when I’m watching videos, as the CPU is working its butt off decoding the codec. I can see what negative effect that would have for the iPhone’s or iPod Touch’s battery life and processor temperature. Apple knows what it’s doing.
Flash has been exploited so thoroughly for annoying ad animations that it’s almost useless. I’m so glad I found the etc/hosts hack that was posted on MDN. I don’t have to see ads anymore, but can still see Flash on sites when I want to.
ewww fleshlight. So wrong.
Still and always the same fools:
– Neglected to pay for have Flash licence for IE
– Jump on it just to play with Apple’s choices
Dummy, follish idiots!
M$ is realy deserves to be erased from earth’s ground!
Flash video must die. Nasty. This is what happens when a company leverages their massive install base to push their junky proprietary formats. Yeah sure they support H264 now, but it is still dripping with proprietary special sauce.
My Windows mobile phone is slow enough and crashes already to be almost unusable. This seems to be either a desperate attempt to fend off the iPhone/Google assault or an attempt to check all boxes.
Not using flash is a big mistake. Most video sites are already in flash. H264 is nice, but like Mp3’s flash is ubiquitous. There is no use in “punishing” the mac crew just to prove a point.
Flash is a resource sucking hog. Even on a Mac Pro.
Well fanbois check into this article http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2623 specifically this quote “Whether Jobs is right remains to be seen, but the half billion devices that already use Flash technology may put a few holes in his argument. It would seem that Apple is in kind of a bind. The early adopters and gadget geeks have all gotten their iPhones, and now competitors are lining up with similar products, some coming in at a much lower price than the iPhone.”
Seems like someone likes the Flash Lite version. Oh yeah that would be the 500000 customers that already have it on the mobile devices. Now tell me again how many Iphones you bois put out so far….. 3 or 4 million. ROFL
Damn you fanbois make this too easy.
iPhone doesn’t need Flash…no one “needs” Flash. There are better ways to do what Flash does on the client side. Look at the Apple website, all that action and not one shred of Flash that I can see. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Macromedia found a way to get Flash on lots of machines by creating a very light weight player that downloads without hardly any bother. It snowballed from there. Now it seems that Adobe is exploiting it for all it is worth. I was hoping that they would have turned Flash into a development tool that could export things like SVG and MPEG4 interactive content but they decided to go for the big money instead by keeping it closed.
What a shame.