Flash coming to most smartphones, but not Apple's iPhone

[AppleInsider]

Adobe on Monday announced partnerships with numerous handset operating system makers, including Research in Motion, Nokia, Palm, Google and Microsoft, to bring Flash Player 10.1 to smartphones. Absent from the list: Apple.

Flash 10.1 is expected to be available as a public beta for Google Android and Nokia's Symbian OS in early 2010. Developer betas of the browser-based runtime will be available for Windows Mobile and Palm webOS later this year. No date was given for BlackBerry devices.

Adobe said that the new mobile version of Flash offers accelerated video and graphics capabilities while conserving battery life. The new player offers streaming video in HD and browser-based Web applications.

"With Flash Player moving to new mobile platforms, users will be able to experience virtually all Flash technology based Web content and applications wherever they are," said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Platform Business Unit at Adobe. "We are excited about the broad collaboration of close to 50 industry leaders in the Open Screen Project and the ongoing collaboration with 19 out of the top 20 handset manufacturers worldwide. It will be great to see first devices ship with full Flash Player in the first half of next year."

Of course, the elusive twentieth manufacturer missing from Adobe's lineup is Apple.

Though the iPhone is not included among the handsets, past reports have suggested that Adobe hopes to bring it to the platform. If that were to happen, though, Flash would have to overcome its various shortcomings on mobile devices as perceived by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

With Flash 10.1, Adobe aims to have cross-compatibility with PCs, smartphones, netbooks and a range of devices with various screen sizes. The effort is a part of the company's Open Screen Project initiative, which includes more than 50 companies.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[monstrosity]

Oh well, never mind, I certainly wont shed a tear.

[John.B]

How many of these implementations are going to suck arse IRL, and how much of the content will be designed for "spiffy" ESPN-style Flash ads (vs content anyone would, you know, want to see)?

Fake apologies for all you guys who "develop" Flash content for a living, but I'm thrilled to be on the 1-in-20 platform that won't support battery-killing Flash-trash ads.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Adobe should be made to deliver a version of Flash that actually performs on the OS X platform before being allowed to move on to the iPhone OS.

At least the Android, etc. crowd will get the eventual option of some sort of Flashblock; I suspect Mobile Windows users will be hosed, as usual.

[kotatsu]

Much as I love my iPhone, it's beginning to look a little old to me. The lack of flash is a big part of that, as mobile browsing isn't all that useful when you end up seeing an awful lot of those 'no flash plug in' icons on web pages.

I'm also growing increasingly impatient over Apple's inability to support multi-tasking on the iPhone. It would be incredibly useful to be able to have Spotify or other web radio/streaming aps running in the background while I email, browse, use google maps etc. And I'd like Twitter, IM, and other gadgets running all the time on the home screen, instead of having to launch them, then quit them, then launch them, then quit them etc etc.

The iPhone is a good device but one which is beginning to fall behind other smart phone OSs, and if I was Apple I would be working hard to get Flash, and other expected modern technologies working sooner rather than later.

[mcarling]

I hope Flash never comes to the iPhone because Flash is a steaming pile of crap and it is obviated by HTML5.

[souliisoul]

Originally Posted by mcarling

I hope Flash never comes to the iPhone because Flash is a steaming pile of crap and it obviated by HTML5.

I agree, it causes so many issues on the mac.

Btw: NonVendorFan will love this article, since it gives him more fuel to rant about how good Flash is because majority of BIG smartphone makers/smartphone operating system providers are going to use Flash in their content.

Quantity does not always mean quality!

[mbarriault]

So we get to miss out on hugely annoying flashy ads and silly games while continuing to enjoy open, non-proprietary ways of viewing HD video that the iPhone fully and almost every modern browser (save IE, where Flash could potentially be called useful) partially supports (which is increasing with every release)?

Damn.

If the day comes that iPhone supports Flash and there is no way to disable it, I may have to trash it.

[Booga]

Originally Posted by monstrosity

Oh well, never mind, I certainly wont shed a tear.

My kids will. playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com, etc, are all Flash. The iPhone has to start supporting it or they will start to fail at their core competency, which is merging in with people's technological lifestyle. If iPhoneOS 4.0 doesn't support it I suspect the platform will start to stagnate.

[monstrosity]

Originally Posted by kotatsu

Much as I love my iPhone, it's beginning to look a little old to me. The lack of flash is a big part of that, as mobile browsing isn't all that useful when you end up seeing an awful lot of those 'no flash plug in' icons on web pages.

Whose kool ade you drinking? it aint apple brand thats for sure.

[Ireland]

Flash barely works on the Mac, so for that reason I'm glad.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by mcarling

I hope Flash never comes to the iPhone because Flash is a steaming pile of crap and it obviated by HTML5.

You think HTML5 will kill flash? I know you didn't say that exactly, but it won't.

[tawilson]

Originally Posted by souliisoul

Quantity does not always mean quality!

Exactly, you just have to look at Windows to see that!

[monstrosity]

Originally Posted by Booga

My kids will. playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com, etc, are all Flash. The iPhone has to start supporting it or they will start to fail at their core competency, which is merging in with people's technological lifestyle. If iPhoneOS 4.0 doesn't support it I suspect the platform will start to stagnate.

Fair point but sites such as playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com will bend to better technologies eventually.
It's really in your and your kids best interest that Flash stays off the iPhone you know.

[-hh]

Originally Posted by Booga

My kids will. playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com, etc, are all Flash. The iPhone has to start supporting it or they will start to fail ...

YMMV, but I don't think that there's all that many customers of iPhones who are under 10 years old.

I'm sure that there's plenty who want one, but they're just kind of ever-so-slightly reliant on their parents to pay the $1000/year AT&T bill.

And while I know that things change over time, I was able to vote before I was afforded a $500 toy.


-hh

[Yawnstretch]

Originally Posted by mbarriault

So we get to miss out on hugely annoying flashy ads and silly games while continuing to enjoy open, non-proprietary ways of viewing HD video that the iPhone fully and almost every modern browser (save IE, where Flash could potentially be called useful) partially supports (which is increasing with every release)?

Damn.

If the day comes that iPhone supports Flash and there is no way to disable it, I may have to trash it.

Sorry guys but it'd be easy enough to deactivate flash if the phone supported it. In the meantime every website that has any kind of video uses flash so its a serious problem whether you want to admit it or not.

I love my iphone but having flash would make be upgrade immediately.

[tawilson]

Originally Posted by Booga

My kids will. playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com

Not being funny, but how many 4-10 year olds are going to be BUYING iPhones/iPod Touches? NONE!

Contrast that with how many adults will buy iPhones/iPod Touches for other things other than Flash video (which most sites have adapted to play nicely with the iPhone anyway) and you get a way bigger number.

[Jon T]

Please Apple, hold out for html 5 and keep Flash off the iphone!

I had cause to look around my Mac, and the files that were sprayed around the place by Adobe's flash was incredible.

Anyone concerned about privacy and "private browsing" should be concerned - there was pretty much a complete record in more than one place on my disk of every Flash site visited since whenever...

Why Adobe, why??

[tawilson]

Originally Posted by Yawnstretch

Sorry guys but it'd be easy enough to deactivate flash if the phone supported it. In the meantime every website that has any kind of video uses flash so its a serious problem whether you want to admit it or not.

Most Flash video websites tend to support the iPhone anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

[palegolas]

I'm happy it's not on the iPhone as a standard ad viewing plugin.

If the people at Adobe are smart... and I'm not sure they are, they should develope their own app store for Mobile Flash and once and for all standardise app making across several mobile platforms using Mobile Flash, or mobile AIR or whatever...
I don't think they're smart though, or got the guts.

Mobile Flash.
Flash Air store. F-AIR.
The FAIR Store... damn it... sounds too good to be true..

[stardustag]

there are plenty of websites out there that use flash that are not for video or annoying ads. This is a bummer.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by Yawnstretch

Sorry guys but it'd be easy enough to deactivate flash if the phone supported it. In the meantime every website that has any kind of video uses flash so its a serious problem whether you want to admit it or not.

I love my iphone but having flash would make be upgrade immediately.

Flash would kill the battery and iPhone has a YouTube app. I would have said you were right when the iPhone came out, but after owning two of them I now see this argument as dead-wrong. YouTube has become the internet standard, and on the web wherever there is a YouTube video the iPhone OS can play it. Around 1/3 of the internet use YouTube everyday, we don't need no stinking Flash.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by stardustag

there are plenty of websites out there that use flash that are not for video or annoying ads. This is a bummer.

And most of the good devs understand they also need to have an optional HTML version.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by tawilson

Most Flash video websites tend to support the iPhone anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

Exactly, they came to us.

[mcarling]

Originally Posted by Ireland

You think HTML5 will kill flash? I know you didn't say that exactly, but it won't.

You're right. I didn't say exactly that HTML5 will kill Flash. HTML5 obviates the need for Flash. As such, HTML5 will be a major factor in the death of Flash. Apple's backing of HTML5 and their lack of support for Flash are closely related.

[tawilson]

Originally Posted by mcarling

I hope Flash never comes to the iPhone because Flash is a steaming pile of crap and it is obviated by HTML5.

Flash should be banned because of the whole Flash-cookies thing in my opinion. If I chose not to be tracked by turning off third-party cookies, I expect sites to obey that.

Sadly, theses nasty ad marketing web sites use Flash-cookies which bypass the usual rules of your browser.

Evil swines!!!

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by tawilson

Exactly, you just have to look at Windows to see that!

Or number of glass screened iMacs sold.

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by Ireland

Around 1/3 of the internet use YouTube everyday, we don't need no stinking Flash.

The other 2/3 uses Flash. BRING IT.

[Zoolook]

Originally Posted by tawilson

Flash should be banned because of the whole Flash-cookies thing in my opinion. If I chose not to be tracked by turning off third-party cookies, I expect sites to obey that.

Sadly, theses nasty ad marketing web sites use Flash-cookies which bypass the usual rules of your browser.

Evil swines!!!

If Flash makes it to the iPhone, there will have to be a way of disabling it. The worst thing about this is going to be all the ads that will consume what little bandwidth AT&T has.

Mobile browsing is the Trojan Horse to finally get rid of all the proprietary crap on the web; starting with Flash.

[teckstud]

Apple gave us MMS.
Apple will give us FLASH.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by teckstud

Or number of glass screened iMacs sold.

Put the computer in the right spot and you'll never have to move it. As for glass on a lappy, I much prefer the glossy plastic screen on the Air - my Air

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by teckstud

Apple gave us MMS.
Apple will give us FLASH.

Worst. Argument. EvR!

[star-fish]

Originally Posted by Ireland

And most of the good devs understand they also need to have an optional HTML version.

Yeah, because clients always listen to what's in their best interests.

[rdas7]

As someone who "develops" flash for a living, trust me it's not Flash that you don't want on your mobile device, it's the programs that are made using Flash that you don't want on your mobile device.

Memory leaks, poor code optimization, and a host of how-not-to-write-software is sadly the standard when it comes to developing using Flash. It's bloated, poorly put together, and highly highly inefficient. Leave any Flash "app" open long enough and you can watch your memory/battery life, etc. evaporate.

Of course, nobody cares about any of that stuff when making banner ads, or microsites to promote the latest phone/car/movie/toy/whatever… because the sites are designed by nature to be short-lived.

As soon as you want to do anything more sophisticated, app-wise, a whole host of options become much more viable. This is why you're not going to see Adobe porting all their applications to run on Air, or the next version of Office to be deployed using Air. If you want actual applications, there's .NET, Cocoa, etc. — Flash is for web animations, and will likely always remain so, and now that HTML5 is on the horizon, there is an ever-decreasing need to rely on it.

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by Ireland

Put the computer in the right spot and you'll never have to move it.

I don't know about where you live but the sun here shifts angles during seasons.

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by Ireland

Worst. Argument. EvR!

Coming from you, I wear that as a badge of HONOUR!

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by teckstud

The other 2/3 uses Flash. BRING IT.

YouTube uses Flash brother. The point being the had the sense to go with Apple an provide optional H.264 support, which negates the negates for Flash on the iPhone. The main argument for Flash is video, but YouTube is video, these days.

[alkrantz]

Originally Posted by Ireland

Flash barely works on the Mac, so for that reason I'm glad.

How does it barely work? Works fine for me.

I have been doing web development and design for a living for the past 10 years now, on a mac, using all the same tools everyone else does, PHP, XML, XHTML, CSS, JS, AJAX and AS. I personally think Flash has come a long way in recent years and that AS3 was a significant step forward for them. I don't have near as many problems accomplishing what I want to with Flash as I used to, and frankly there are times where the fact that it is proprietary is actually helpful because I can assume a certain amount of cross platform performance that I can't always get from complicated CSS, XML and JS.

Seriously, if you believe that ALL flash does is produce web banners and youtube you obviously aren't in the web development business at all. The fact of the matter is banner ads were annoying well before flash. Remember animated .gifs? Furthermore, while there is no shortage of annoying flash web content, the truth is there is plenty of flash content that people DO want to see. video game sites, movie sites, children's games, all of these make A LOT of money and have a HUGE consumer audience. An Audience that WILL buy a phone that has flash.

Some of you seem to think that every consumer out there is just like you, and you fail to realize that whether you liek flash or not, many consumers do. I can tell you from personal experience working on completely add related flash sites that these sites see enormous hits, trust me I have seen the analytics for this type of content and they are being visited by key demographics that advertisers will pay to reach.

Maybe promising advancements in HTML 5, JS or CSS will eventually remove the need for FLash, I don't know. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 do not. I have more hope for JS2. I do know that for most of us who develop web sites it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I already know all of these tools and will continue to use the one that works the best for the job. The typical site I build these days uses a bit of everything and that includes flash.

The bottom line here is, there is a use for flash, and there is flash content people want to see, and there will be for AT LEAST 5 more years. So the need to display flash content isn't going anywhere soon, and consumers WILL notice if they cant view the content they want on one platform and can on another. And they WILL buy the product that lets them view the content they want.

Obviously you will take what I am saying however you want, but this is my real world experience working in web and what I have seen to be true. For what it's worth I personally believe that Apple will add flash when the time comes and they are forced to do so in order to stay viable, and this entire debate will be a non-issue. I also believe that those of you who are saying you will get rid of your iPhone when that happens are idiots. Of course you wont. If you did, you wouldn't have a smart phone at all. Because they will all have flash.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by teckstud

Coming from you, I wear that as a badge of HONOUR!

You shouldn't. It was an awful statement.

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by alkrantz

How does it barely work? Works fine for me.

Oh, so you're the one. Flash sucks on the Mac, people know this.

GOOGLE

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by tawilson

Flash should be banned because of the whole Flash-cookies thing in my opinion. If I chose not to be tracked by turning off third-party cookies, I expect sites to obey that.

Sadly, theses nasty ad marketing web sites use Flash-cookies which bypass the usual rules of your browser.

Evil swines!!!

Funny I say the exact same thing about the Genius feature in iTunes. Never use it , never will.