Regarding Flash on the iPhone

06 March 2008 · 39 Comments · adobe, apple, flash, iphone

I just want to go on the record and say that I believe that the reason behind the iPhone not having Flash has nothing to do with CPU horsepower, memory, battery usage, security, or any other technical reason.

In fact, I’d tend to agree with Scoble’s mystery source who claims to have seen Flash running on an iPhone in a lab. This makes perfect sense to me, and I believe it’s completely true. I’m about as positive as I can be that the iPhone engineers are running Flash on the iPhone, just as I I believed the rumor and predicted Apple’s transition for Mac OS X from PPC to Intel back in 2002.

I’m not saying I know why Apple isn’t allowing us to run Flash. Scoble’s source claims it’s because of a dispute between Steve Jobs and Adobe over their PDF renderer. This doesn’t sound especially compelling to me. I suspect it’s something more to do with a level of customization or attention Apple would like to get from Adobe.

Who knows, maybe Apple has a Flash-compatible alternative up its sleeve.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll be hearing anything more about this for a while, as it will be overshadowed by the impending iPhone SDK announcement later today.

Comments

jon deal · 06 March 2008 at 12:03 PM

From my view here in the peanut galley, I tend to believe the "it's too slow to be useful" story. I'm sitting here with a tricked out Mac Pro with gobs of RAM and Flash crawls in any browser I fire up. (Relative to Flash on a modest XP box, IMHO). I can only imagine that on the limited specs of an iPhone, it's even worse. I'd also bet that Flash is running on some iPhone-device inside Apple HQ

Can't wait to see what devs come up with for the iPhone, though! Opening the device up to developers, even on a limited basis will make that device even better.

Chris Ryland · 06 March 2008 at 12:03 PM

I think it's more than tiffs between Jobs & Adobe, and more than technicalities. I think Apple is (rightly) holding out for more openness on the web, and Flash is the ultimate closed system.

I don't think they're doing it to be altruistic, I think they're doing it to have more control of their future, to be less beholden to Adobe.

And I think they're right.

roxanne sutton · 06 March 2008 at 12:03 PM

In light of all the Mix08 silverlight hype from yesterday, Adobe better pick up the ball for iphone - before someone else does.

Scott · 06 March 2008 at 12:03 PM

This dispute may go back as far as the late '90s.

Before it was purchased by Apple, NeXT used Display Postscript as the primary display technology for OPENSTEP, which was licensed from Adobe at a significant fee. When OPENSTEP became OS X, Apple replaced Display Postscript with own PDF implementation, cutting Adobe out of significant revenue per copy sold and effectively killing the technology.

It's possible Adobe may still be holding a "grudge" and is using Flash on the iPhone to regain a piece of the pie from every copy of OS X sold.

Dan Benjamin · 06 March 2008 at 12:03 PM

@Scott - That's an interesting angle, and there's some history to back it up, too, isn't there. But I wonder if it's really worth it ... wouldn't Adobe want to get its biggest internet technology on the best mobile platform?

Phillip Winn · 06 March 2008 at 03:03 PM

This is a no-lose prediction!

If the problems *are* technical, then faster processors inside future iPhones will eliminate that problem, and we'll see Flash on iPhone.

If the problems *are* political, then eventually Adobe will cave to whatever Apple is demanding, and we'll see Flash on iPhone.

Eventually there will be Flash on iPhone, and you'll be able to say you were right all along. Nice.

P.S. I suspect it does exist, but is slow enough that Apple thinks it would make people criticize iPhone, so they're demanding more, and Adobe is not in much mood to give it to them.

Tijs · 06 March 2008 at 04:03 PM

How about this one: games can be made quite easily in flash. but games on websites don't earn any money for Apple. Games built with xcode and sold through App store do make Apple money hence no Flash on iPhone. This would also suggest that they never really meant it when they said the web was to be the iPhone platform when the iPhone was first released. Maybe because they weren't ready for an SDK yet. As far as conspiracy thinking goes i think this one isn't bad :)

Geoffrey Grosenbach · 06 March 2008 at 06:03 PM

I don't think there's any conspiracy. I think Flash would be too slow, as mentioned.

I also think that most Flash-based websites would not be very usable on the iPhone. HTML can be scaled up easily (font sizes are dynamically increased when viewed on the iPhone), but most Flash sites and games would require a lot of zooming and scrolling in order to navigate on that small screen. Of course, special apps written for the iPhone in Flash wouldn't have those limitations.

I only rarely miss Flash on the iPhone...usually when the NYTimes posts an infographic in Flash. I think it's better off without it.

Jorge Quinteros · 06 March 2008 at 09:03 PM

One of the first endless complaints that I heard from people was the very fact that iPhone failed to support Flash websites. Are they nice looking? Yes, but to me personally, they're totally inaccessible when it comes to reaching a broader audience. Clean coding is my best choice and as long as the iPhone supports normal web browsing, I'll forever be a supporter.

Geoffrey Grosenbach · 07 March 2008 at 12:03 PM

On Thursday, Apple announced that they will distribute third party iPhone freeware apps for free.

This puts the last nail in the coffin of the "Apple omitted Flash for financial reasons" theory.

Mr. Mau · 07 March 2008 at 05:03 PM

My humble, and rather ignorant opinion, is that there may be some truth behind CPU cycles, heat, and what not.

A while back, a website drew my attention on how much power it sucked from my computer.

Once you are on the mini site, scroll to the right (with the provided arrows) and enter the 'credits' section...

http://www.sonyclassics.com/triplets/

Again, it may be ignorant, and stupid... but when I heard the reasons, it did make sense to me.

Jon Buda · 11 March 2008 at 05:03 PM

I could really care less if Flash is released on the iPhone. If it ever is, great, but Apple/Adobe had better perfect it. If it ends up crashing my browser I'm going to be unhappy, and if there's no way to disable it I'm going to be even more annoyed, especially using Flash over EDGE (yikes).

If its not ever released, no biggie. I don't think Flash would add that much value to a device that has already far exceeded my expectations. As the platform matures more and more popular sites will adapt to the iPhone limitations anyways.

The only reason I would want Flash is for Pandora. So here's to hoping Pandora creates a native app with the SDK....assuming Apple lets them :)

Andrew Knott · 19 March 2008 at 04:03 PM

Flash IS too slow. It's true.

But also, look at how embedded plugin content is done on the iPhone's Mobile Safari. Embedded Quicktimes are not played in the context of a page, they are played in the native player. Also, Flash uses garbage collection for memory management and it's not that efficient either.

I posted on this today if anyone's interested.

http://tinyurl.com/25rdjd

Rob Menke · 20 March 2008 at 11:03 PM

The other possibility that’s rarely mentioned is that Scoble’s source was both wrong and right: he saw a Flash application (applet?) running on an iPhone, but it was within the confines of the Quicktime Player which has limited support for playing (older) SWF files. If so, the demonstration for the nameless source was probably more of a “it’s *sorta* supported” display than anything else.

My personal take is that Steve Jobs would rather have a toe ripped violently from his body than let Adobe dictate how applets will be delivered on the mobile web. Flash will be bested by CASH (CSS/AJAX/SVG/HTML) as the former has all but been adsorbed into the display advertising market.

Scott · 21 March 2008 at 05:03 PM

Dan wrote "wouldn’t Adobe want to get its biggest internet technology on the best mobile platform?"

My guess is that Adobe sees Apple's PDF implementation as significant stumbling block for their PDF strategy. After acquiring Macromedia, they have additional leverage with Flash.

Adobe wants to build a full blown enterprise document platform on top of PDF. However, Apple uses PDF as the basis for 2D graphics in Mac OS X and provides basic PDF document support as convenience feature for end users. As such, Apple has subverted PDF for it's own goals.

Since Apple's PDF implementation ships with every copy Mac OS X, end users are less likely to download Adobe Reader. In addition, Apple's PDF implementation is usually one or two versions behind Adobe's and lacks most of the enterprise features found in Acrobat Reader. End users who try to view PDF files from the latest version of Adobe's authoring tools may have a poor experience as some content may render incorrectly or not at all.

And if end users can't view extended Acrobat PDF features, why should content creators buy Acrobat Pro when they can simply print directly to PDF in the standard Mac print dialog?

However, If Apple ships with Adobe's PDF implementation, Adobe can us the Mac platform to push rapid adoption of the latest version of PDF and enterprise features. This drives sales of Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Personally, I prefer the simplicity and quick load time of Preview over Acrobat Reader. I have Adobe Reader and Acrobat Pro installed, but have set Preview as the default viewer for PDF files.

Ted T.http://hivelogic.com/wp-content/themes/futurama/images/btn_submit.gif · 13 April 2008 at 10:04 PM

Have you looked at the system requirements for the new Adobe Media Player? Here is one example -- for 1080P on Mac OS X the minimum requirement is a 3 Ghz (or faster) Core Duo -- in other words a Mac Pro. On Windows the 1080P requirement is 1.8 GHz or faster Core Duo. In other words, Adobe is totally screwing Mac users by giving them a very badly performing version of the software.

My reaction -- good thing Steve Jobs is denying Adobe on Flash for the iPhone. He should keep Adobe at bay until they fix all their software, including Flash, Media Player and CS to perform as well on Mac OS X as it does on Windows. Adobe deserves NO favors from Apple until they do it. Keep in mind, having Flash on the iPhone is Apple doing Adobe a favor -- not the other way around. And if the iPhone is successful enough to kill flash on the Web? Good riddance...

ilteris · 29 April 2008 at 01:04 AM

"Who knows, maybe Apple has a Flash-compatible alternative up its sleeve."

-silverlight2.0

L · 21 May 2008 at 02:05 AM

I don't even like Flash on the desktop. I've installed the FlashBlock FireFox extension.

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