“Speaking at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference in Brighton, Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems Paul Betlem was asked by an audience member for an update on Flash support for iPhone users,” Slash Lane reports for AppleInsider.
“Betlem reportedly responded by saying his team is ‘working on Flash on the iPhone’ but given that the iPhone is a closed and closely guarded system, Apple will have final say over whether the application makes its way onto the App Store,” Lane reports. “Should Apple approve the software, it would be available ‘in a very short time,’ Betlem added.”
“Earlier this year, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs panned Flash on the iPhone, arguing that its fragmented architecture offered no middle ground suitable for use on his company’s mobile products,” Lane reports. “Specifically, he said Flash Lite ‘is not capable of being used with the web’ because it doesn’t support the same types of Flash media accessible by the traditional version of Flash player on the PC. On the otherhand, the version built for PC was dubbed a resource hog that ‘performs too slow to be useful’ on the iPhone.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacVicta” for the heads up.]
It better be small.
It better be FAST.
Ot it be DEAD before it even gets NEAR the App Store.
Will it be snappier AND flashier?
Useless resource hog. iPhone would be much better off without it.
Flash on the Beach – sounds naughty.
I would love to see Flash be less prominent on the web. It’s not the best solution for video, period. And once you figure that out, it becomes much less of a “necessity” for anything on the web. Flash sites are stupid, slow, unintuitive, etc.
About the only thing it does well is games and cartoons. Stick with that Adobe. Better yet, die. Or make some really great, fast, unbloated, reasonably priced applications.
It will not be dead before it gets to the app store as it is developed by professionals and not little kid whack and hacks. It is agreed though that flash is useless.
@ freddwer
I think that MDN would be better off without you. Oops! I hate when I try to force my opinions upon others. My bad.
@ stephengulr
Why do you say it is useless? If a lot of people want it, it is not useless. I’m sure that they’ll have the option to turn it off therefore you and freddwer will not lose sleep worrying that Flash has compromised your battery life.
Adobe reminds us of that other useless Stuffit application. Flash was made to compete with animated gifs on a junk pc.
Hope they refuse it. That’s the only hope to see other forms of video on the web in the foreseeable future. As for flash’s other uses, again, there is a chance that non-proprietary things might get some exposure and consequent improvement. At the moment, any improvement relies on Adobe, and that’s not good because their priority is Adobe, not web development. And Microsoft’s competing crap, if it takes off, will be just like another burger king to compete with all the other crap.
We need innovation and improvement maybe, but just things that work in the existing evolving web structure without breaking it would be better than Adobe and Microsoft’s efforts so far.
Like it or not, Flash is needed on the iPhone. It’s used on a huge number of websites to deliver video. Not to mention the ton of video games available. Which probably explains why Apple doesn’t want Flash. It will cut into game sales at the App Store.
Web standards and Javascript engine speeds are progressing to the point where Flash will no longer be needed. The upcoming HTML5 (some of which is being phased in even now) includes dedicated, standardized video and audio tags. Plugins could still be used to play back the audio or video content, but the use of standard media codecs (mp3, H.264, etc.) would eliminate the reliance on one specific plugin and its non-standard media formats.
Hopefully, Apple will continue their push for open standards, instead of Adobe’s (or Microsoft’s, or anyone else’s) closed, proprietary solutions.
Apple has always viewed flash like another junk windows media player, floppy drive, real player etc. Useless and outdated technology that serves no purpose just like java. So don’t be offended, java blows too.
@obtusegoose
Your name fits you well.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> The earliest apps for Apple’s iPhone (which Apple heartily promoted, mind you) were web-based apps and games, which Apple made no profit from. Those games used normal HTML standards, instead of Adobe’s proprietary plugin, so Flash clearly isn’t really *needed* for web games.
And Flash was pressed into duty as a video platform because it was the least-common-denominator video player which worked on all platforms (since Microsoft was too busy trying to gimp Quicktime on Windows to pay attention to Adobe quietly nipping off in the other direction).
This status quo sadly won’t be changing anytime soon, but there’s a broader push to use H.264 for video on the internet, instead of Adobe’s proprietary .flv format. Since Adobe is no doubt using the status quo to attempt to push their influence further, I sincerely hope Apple continues to shun Flash for the iPhone (and considering Google isn’t too keen on Flash either, they have at least one ally in that fight).
If you don’t have Flash, you don’t have “the whole internet.”
I would welcome Flash on my iPhone, but of course, I would also want the option to be able to turn it off.
I don’t care if it comes from the app store, or Cydia. Either way, it’s better than no option at all.
This is still all about Flash LITE, essentially a WAPized version of Flash. There is NO PHONE that has Flash (only Flash LITE). On a phone that renders the WHOLE internet, if Adobe isn’t ready to step up to the plate with the WHOLE Flash, they need to go back to the drawing board.
You can’t define the internet like that. Otherwise, there is NO device/computer anywhere capable of displaying “the whole internet”. Somewhere, there is some content that any given device (including computer’s running XP or Vista) won’t be able to display or interact with.
Flash is just another proprietary executable format that enables Adobe to continue dumbing down the internet to Adobe’s level.
Adobe has been crapping on the Mac platform for forever with their second-rate implementation of their plugin compared with the Windows version. Why would the iPhone version be any better?
do you turn off the flash web site designers?
Didn’t Adobe screw Apple over at some point? Don’t they hold back innovating the mac version to wait for windows capabilities to catch up? Didn’t Adobe drag their feet on the OS X version of their software?
Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Screw Adobe.
I hope apple blocks Flash until Adobe cries. Flash is ugly and horrible technology.
“Like it or not, Flash is needed on the iPhone”
No it’s not. I don’t need it now and I don’t need it tomorrow, or the next day. OR EVER. Sorry.
Will it be a separate application? Why can’t they just send it to and have them integrate it with Safari. If it’s a whole separate browser then I won’t buy it.
A lot of you guys truly are MacDorks. A better phrase could not have been coined.
No, Flash isn’t needed on the iPhone. Nor is it needed on the Mac. In fact, while we’re at it, let’s get rid of any technology not specifically created by Apple…
mp1
mp2
mp3
mp4
jpeg
tiff
avi
wmv
gif
divx
png
I mean, why even have a browser on the Mac or iPhone? We don’t need this crap! Get rid of Safari!!!! Get rid of all the other browsers for the Mac. We Mac users want to live in an isolated, proprietary, little world where we are suckled by Steve Jobs and we don’t care what anyone else might have to say.
This will be hard.
1) iPhones battery is bad enough. Flash would kill it.
2) Apple would bring this out via a software upgrade. Enhancing existing applications with framework additions is not supported with the tools from the App Store.
@theloniusMac:
You really need to chill, dude.