Comments on: Adobe already has iPhone version of Flash running on emulator

By: Louise

Louise — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:20:33 +0000

Apple is working with Mozilla and Google to get those proprietary junk off the web as much as possible.
What we need is alternative ways to bring rich contents to the web by means of open technology and not the other way around.
Besides, if iPhone starts supporting flash, what about Java and Silverlight?

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:20:04 +0000

I smell political brinkmanship…

By: John

John — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:51:29 +0000

Apple almost went out of business. Then Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997. If Jobs’ cancer comes back… can Apple survive without Jobs?

By: John

John — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:51:29 +0000

Apple almost went out of business. Then Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997. If Jobs’ cancer comes back… can Apple survive without Jobs?

By: BelAus

BelAus — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:44:52 +0000

+1 here! I am not too fussed about flashy looking websites, but I do see some merit in Flex apps - and as others have mentioned Flex is not proprietary (anymore), Flex is open-source.

By: Raul Riera

Raul Riera — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:24:02 +0000

Its about Apple beign a Jerk, they dont want Adobe AIR on their iPhone to take away the 30% profit from the App Store

By: Kontra

Kontra — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:44:16 +0000

Even if Flash could be optimized to run faster on OS X with less of an impact on the CPU and battery life, there’d still remain a huge issue of clashing UIs and interaction frameworks on the iPhone between Adobe and Apple. The iPhone is establishing the first multi-touch driven mass-market platform, Flash doesn’t even have a multi-touch framework. I explore the implications of this for both Adobe and Apple in:

The new UI wars: Why there’s no Flash on iPhone 2.0
http://counternotions.com/2008/06/17/flash-iphone/

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:54:56 +0000

It’s not the Flash Player that’s the issue. It’s poor coding from the people developing the Flash. AS1 and even AS2 were VERY forgiving in their syntax which allowed for some seriously bloated code. AS3 should change that. Not to mention time-line-based flash movies which will eat through CPU cycles faster than… //instert witty comment here//

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:27:45 +0000

Flash is not proprietary. Adobe has released all information about the file format, as well as the player and how it interprets the format. Flex is open-source. What’s proprietary?

By: steven pauwels

steven pauwels — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:27:40 +0000

the end of all browser plugins is near…

By: randyedmonds

randyedmonds — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:10:29 +0000

The only reason I would like to have flash support on the iPhone would be enable Flex applications. The Adobe Flex IDE is an excellent development environment.

By: browse

browse — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:09:32 +0000

As a web app builder, I’d really like to see Flash on the iPhone. The beautiful thing about Flash is that it has an easy to understand API that just works on every platform. Java, Javascript, and others have all promised that, but Flash actually does it.

AIR on the iPhone would be pretty sweet.

By: MacGuru

MacGuru — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:57:49 +0000

Others will overpass Apple? Yeah right.. like the “others” that would have put Apple out of business 30 years ago…. haha

By: MacGuru

MacGuru — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:56:28 +0000

I think the Flash capability may be included in 2.0 (hopefully, but inlikely) or in 2.1 etc.
Since Flash support is not an app per se, it wouldn’t be distributed via the App Store.

By: Brian N

Brian N — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:28:05 +0000

Come on guys, Apple does everything for a reason! They don’t want to be trapped in Adobe’s proprietary Flash world. Therefore, they’re developing SproutCore. Go to roughlydrafted and read about it. Open source is good.

By: Pat Thornton

Pat Thornton — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:21:42 +0000

I’m not that excited to see Flash on the iPhone.

Flash is a resource hog. Have you ever gone back and run some modern Web sites on an older computer? The sites crawl. Sites that rely on Flash tend to eat up a ton of CPU cycles (the iPhone doesn’t have a lot to begin with) and would eat up battery life. That’s not exactly something Apple wants.

The only way Apple will allow Flash on the iPhone is if Adobe can somehow make Flash more elegant and less resource intensive (without being a cut-down version of Flash).

The other issue is that a lot of Flash developers don’t know what they are doing and have overly bloated code (many Flash developers were originally graphic designers). This isn’t a problem for most video Flash players (which is probably what most people want out of Flash anyway), but it is a huge problem for all those ridiculous sites built entirely in Flash.

This isn’t Apple just being a Jerk. It’s about the realities on the ground.

Now, I hope to one day be able to go to sites like Hulu.com on an iPhone but not until Adobe works through its issues.

By: andraz

andraz — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:15:37 +0000

Flash needs iPhone support and iPhone needs flash support. Otherwise, with adobe being very proactive in mobile phones world, others will overpass apple. Specially now with java to flash technologies and mobile vendors opening up functions to flash lite.

By: Rick Curran

Rick Curran — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:50:24 +0000

Hi, unless the power consumption issues are sorted out I don’t think it will happen. What I wonder though is whether Apple will at least provide support for playback of FLV video within the Quicktime framework on the iPhone / iPod Touch? It would be even more feasible with Adobe’s recent Open Screen initiative I think.

By: FlashHopeful

FlashHopeful — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:28:20 +0000

Well, this would be nice, but you have to recall Apple’s wording within the SDK licensing agreement specifically regarding interpreted languages:

“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 builtin interpreter(s),”

This is a shot at Java and Flash. According to this - Sun and Adobe can’t produce their apps, unless they come to some arrangement with Apple outside of the regular developer channel. As far as seeing these in the App Store - I think it’s highly doubtful.