Steve Jobs pans Flash on the iPhone

[AppleInsider]

Over the last year, many observers have wondered when Apple would deliver Adobe Flash support on the iPhone. At the company's shareholder meeting on Tuesday, Steve Jobs made comments that indicate that support isn't coming anytime soon, thanks to architectural limitations in Flash itself. A full explanation of those limitations follow.

Why Flash?

The iPhone's mobile Safari browser delivers such a desktop-like experience that the main remaining element missing for most users has related to Flash, software commonly used by web designers to add interactive applets to their websites. Adobe's Flash acts as a self contained environment for presenting interactive, animated elements on web pages.

The most common use of Flash is in banner ads that goad users to click the moving monkey or fight an opponent in order to draw attention to an advertised product. Flash has also become the lowest common denominator for embedding video clips into webpages, making it easier for web developers to present video clips that works on any system without forcing users to install a plugin.

Flash just works because most web users have the required plugin already installed; Adobe has bundling agreements with both Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS X. Users who don't have Flash pre-installed can download it for free, and Adobe now even offers a Linux version of the plugin.

Flash on the iPhone

Less technically inclined pundits have expected Apple to release a Flash plugin for the iPhone that works identically to the plugin used on desktop computers, similar to how the iPhone supports viewing PDF documents or Microsoft Word and Excel files. The problem is that the Flash runtime has never been designed to work on anything outside of a desktop computer, which has almost unlimited access to processing power and few constraints on battery use, available RAM, or heat dissipation.

The iPhone is a very different product. It's a fraction of the size of a laptop battery and uses a low power, embedded ARM processor that works unlike the Intel Core or PowerPC processors used in Macs and PCs that can run Flash. In order to develop a Flash plugin for the iPhone, Adobe's proprietary software would need to be recompiled and optimized for the ARM architecture, which isn't something Apple could easily do independent of Adobe.

More Problems for Flash

There are other problems that are even more significant, however. While desktop computers can typically afford to run any process at full bore, the iPhone's processor is not only smaller and slower, but also designed to use power far more efficiently, cycling down when not needed in order to both conserve power and to limit the heat that a fully running processor would produce.

The iPhone's OS X environment is also designed to run from a relatively small disk image stored in NVRAM; Adobe's Flash is designed to run on a desktop machine with few limitations on the amount of disk space consumed or RAM used; it can easily leak memory and gobble up more RAM than svelte iPhone apps are ever intended to use.

Even if Adobe could deliver its own Flash plugin for the iPhone that cleanly ported the aging Flash environment to ARM, the work required to optimize power and memory consumption and manage heat dissipation would result in a plugin that could not run the majority of Flash web applets that have been designed to work on desktop computers. This would be like a Windows emulator that only runs software specifically designed for Vista; the majority of users would want a version of Flash that runs all the old code out there on the web, not just a subset of newly developed applets that aren't available yet.

A Big Maybe

None of this should be any surprise to developers who have been keeping tabs on Apple's guidelines for iPhone development. Last January, Jobs said the iPhone would not ship with support for Sun's Java, but left a question mark hanging on the subject of Flash support, using the word "maybe."

Between then and the arrival of the iPhone in late June, Apple began work with Google to migrate the YouTube video library from a Flash-based player designed to run from a web page to a custom iPhone interface that downloads ISO standard, MPEG 4 H.264 videos from Google's servers. H.264 is the same standard video format being used by everything from Sony's Blu-Ray discs to Apple's iTunes and open source libraries such as x264.

That move was clearly an effort to greatly reduce the iPhone's need for Flash as a container for distributing web videos. Once the iPhone was delivered, the appearance of its H.264 YouTube player and the lack of Flash support dropped a big hint about the likelihood of Flash ever arriving, but the evidence against Flash support on the iPhone continued to mount.

Dear Developers: Don't Use Flash

As noted in Gone in a Flash: More on Apple’s iPhone Web Plans, an Apple developer document published in June entitled "Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone" presented a number of recommendations to iPhone web developers that did not exactly convey optimism about the speedy arrival of a Flash plugin. It made four curious references to Flash on the iPhone:
"Don’t bring up JavaScript alerts that ask users to download Flash. Flash isn’t supported and neither are downloads.""Safari on iPhone does not support… Java applets, Flash, Plug-in installation"Under the section "Unsupported Technologies," Apple listed one technology: Flash."You’ll want to avoid using Flash and Java for iPhone content. You’ll also want to avoid encouraging users to download the latest Flash on their iPhone, because neither Flash nor downloads are supported by Safari on iPhone."
The guidelines didn’t just tell developers to "deal with the existing omission of Flash," but instead suggested they begin using more open alternatives. It actively encouraged developers to "Stick With Standards," recommending CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax on the iPhone. "The web is always evolving, and as it does, so will Safari," the report noted. "You’ll want to keep informed of the evolving standards emanating from WHATWG and W3C standards bodies."

The WHATWG, of which Apple is member, is a standards Working Group specifically developing Web Hypertext Application Technologies, quite specifically alternatives to using Adobe's proprietary Flash, Flex or AIR, or Microsoft's competing Silverlight, which is targeted directly at Flash as well.

Other limitations Apple lists for developers building iPhone web apps forbid the use of polling in JavaScript; the use of any non-streaming media, images, HTML or script downloads over 10MB; any JavaScript executions that last longer than five seconds; the use of mouse-over events (a limitation posed by using a touch screen rather than a click or hover mouse); and user interaction involving file uploads and downloads.

All of these limitations would also apply to a hypothetical Adobe Flash iPhone environment, making Adobe's task of porting its environment to the iPhone extremely difficult; the practical requirement of running existing Flash applets, which make heavy use of mouse-overs, downloads, and event loops, would simply render a usable Flash on the iPhone impossible.

The Flash Lite at the End of the Tunnel

It's noteworthy that Adobe has moved away from attempting to port the full Flash runtime to other mobile phones. Instead, the company developed Flash Lite, a simplified scripting runtime designed to provide a user interface layer of interactivity that could be used to design basic phone interfaces. Flash Lite doesn't run any of the Flash content found on websites, rendering it worthless to iPhone users.

Apple's phone already has a far more sophisticated development environment for building real desktop-style applications called Cocoa; Flash Lite is really only useful to mobile service providers who want to add a standardized layer of graphics on the handsets they sell to make them all look cohesively branded.

That's why Jobs said at Tuesday's shareholders meeting that Flash Lite "is not capable of being used with the web." It simply is not a web plugin technology and only bears fleeting relation to the desktop computer Flash, which Jobs said "performs too slow to be useful" on the iPhone.

The Missing Product in the Middle.

"There's this missing product in the middle," Jobs continued, but based on the developer documentation Apple provides for the iPhone, it's clear Apple isn't holding its breath waiting for Adobe to develop this missing product.

That missing product is unlikely to ever exist, because compatibility with existing desktop Flash applets simply isn't a good fit in a mobile device, particularly an aggressively battery efficient ARM unit like the iPhone. That's not really a problem because, while Flash makes a convenient way to develop web applets for desktop users who have the Flash plugin already installed, it really doesn't offer much for iPhone users apart from the ability to access Flash web video clips, view flashing ad banners, and see Flash applets sites on sites that use them.

Apple insists there are better alternatives to all three. The company is pushing the use of standard H.264 video, advocating the future development of standards-based web applications with WHATWG and HTML 5.0 along with partners Firefox and Opera (and increasingly Microsoft), and using Ajax technologies centered on open standards including JavaScript and CSS right now. In fact, Apple has removed nearly every vestige of Flash from its corporate website.

Apple has done so much to present open alternatives to Flash that it seems to make it pretty clear that the company is not only betting against Adobe ever porting an acceptable Flash runtime for the iPhone, but also seems to suggest that Apple would rather the iPhone's web browser be entirely free of any dependence upon Adobe at all.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[pressmeister]

No comment other than they should try harder!!

[Booga]

Although Flash ads are probably the most common flash I see on a daily basis, the only ones I ever interact with are the games on Facebook. I always have a few Scrabulous games going, and not being able to play on my iPod Touch is annoying. I understand there's a more official Scrabble game coming out for the iPhone/Touch, but if it doesn't play against Scrabulous users it's close to useless for me.

[ascii]

Maybe Apple are making a principled stand that the web should be not proprietary, or maybe they just don't want to promote a competitor to Quicktime.

[stevetim]

Article very well done! I understand the difficulties much better and Job's is not as stupid as I thought. Adobe and Apple should publically get together and solve the problem.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Even if Adobe could deliver its own Flash plugin for the iPhone that cleanly ported the aging Flash environment to ARM, the work required to optimize power and memory consumption and manage heat dissipation would result in a plugin that could not run the majority of Flash web applets that have been designed to work on desktop computers.

This is not necessarily true.

Adobe Flash, like most modern desktop software, is a horribly bloated, convoluted, memory-leaking, CPU-hogging piece of crap.

I seem to recall having a 300 MHz G3 with 192 MiB of RAM (in 1999) that ran Macromedia Flash just fine. The iPhone's processor runs at 600 MHz and has 1 GiB of RAM.

What exactly has been added to flash since 1999, functionality wise? The only significant thing I can think of is H.264 support, and the iPhone is clearly capable of handling H.264.

So actually, Adobe really should focus on streamlining and optimising Flash. It is possible to make full-blooded Flash work on the iPhone, they'd just have to make the underlying architecture "not shit (TM)". Of course, this would benefit desktop users as well as iPhone users. I guess the problem is that Adobe would have to hire decent software programmers, and it seems like there's probably only 3 in the entire world.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by stevetim

and Job's is not as stupid as I thought.

What's with the modern obsession of putting an apostrophe before any letter "s" that appears at the end of a word? The man's name is "Jobs".

[alvinguzman]

If you use 'SysInfo' on jailbroken phones you can see that the following stats:

Phys. Memory 116 MB
CPU 412 mhz
Bus 103.00 mhz


I seem to recall having a 300 MHz G3 with 192 MiB of RAM (in 1999) that ran Macromedia Flash just fine. The iPhone's processor runs at 600 MHz and has 1 GiB of RAM.

[shawnathan]

If I'm reading this correctly, it sucks that iPhone does not support Javascript. The solution to no flash could be solved with Javascript, if only you're using the flash as a way of animating static websites.

[jgc94131]

You need to re-read. Javascript works fine on the iPhone.

[cherrypop]

ASCII: Couldn't agree more. And given what Apple has invested in QT and perhaps what they stand to lose, why would SJ want Flash on the iPhone?

What Apple should (and might well be trying to do) is negotiate with Adobe to buy Flash.

That all said, I hate Flash, but I want it on my iPhone until QT takes over.

[libmanj]

Originally Posted by cherrypop

ASCII: Couldn't agree more. And given what Apple has invested in QT and perhaps what they stand to lose, why would SJ want Flash on the iPhone?

What Apple should (and might well be trying to do) is negotiate with Adobe to buy Flash.

That all said, I hate Flash, but I want it on my iPhone until QT takes over.

When it all comes down to it, the iPhone does not provide the "full internet" as promised, and what keeps it from doing so is the absence of Flash.

Add me to the list of those who suggest that Apple and Adobe should get together and figure this one out.

[FastLaneJB]

This article isn't exactly true with regards to Flash Lite or Flash on a mobile device. For instance I had a Windows Mobile phone many years ago which had a Flash plugin for Pocket Internet Explorer. I don't know up to what version of Flash this supported but it played Flash animations at the time just fine. This was before I'd even heard of YouTube. That phone had a 400Mhz ARM9 processor and 64MB RAM.

The Nokia N95 8GB has a firmware now which has Flash Lite 3 added to it along with a plugin for it's WebKit based browser. This allows this phone to play inline Flash videos on YouTube and other sites without problems. This device has a 330Mhz ARM11 core CPU and 128MB RAM, still slower than the iPhone's processor which as far as I know is a 400Mhz ARM11 unit.

Microsoft is porting Silverlight to S60 so an ARM core has the power to run this as well. Also I don't think Nokia's browser runs Java inside but they do have Java on the phone in the form of the mobile version of Java J2ME.

So while there would be problems with things like mouse overs on the iPhone, there is no technical reason that it couldn't be done. It's a case of either Adobe not wanting to port it or Apple not allowing them. I'm sure it would affect battery life but if it could be disabled or not run without the user activating the control then this wouldn't be so bad, it would stop Flash adverts at least.

[allblue]

This article is an example of what AppleInsider does best - explaining technical matters in a way that non-techy people such as myself can understand. Good stuff!

@Mr H

Much as I respect your effort, I'm not sure your sig is quite right. 'It has' becomes the possessive pronoun spelt 'its' i.e 'belonging to it' doesn't it? In which case, you're going to have to change your sig there, otherwise they're going to get it wrong in their posts aren't they?

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by libmanj

When it all comes down to it, the iPhone does not provide the "full internet" as promised, and what keeps it from doing so is the absence of Flash....

It depends how you define "Internet."

The Internet was conceived as an open, standards-based network. The iPhone provides the "full" Internet minus the proprietary add-ons, so you could argue that this meets the description. Advertising was never intended to be part of the Internet either.

I hope Apple never enables Flash on the iPhone, and after reading this article I understand how incredibly stupid the argument for Flash really is. Most people who want it, seem to want it for reasons that are lame, like playing games and watching videos and there are much better alternatives as to those uses as the article points out. People don't seem to "want Flash" as much as they just see the broken web pages and want it to work.

If the SDK arrives as rumoured however, there is nothing to stop Adobe from writing a Flash plug-in for the iPhone and distributing it through iTunes. It will be interesting (after noting the technical information in this article), to see if they are up to the task. Adobe has a reputation for making the exact kind of bloated, poorly coded crap software that would be anathema to the iPhone.

I bet they can't do it.

[Hal 9000]

Apple needs to get Quicktime streaming to work on the iPhone. As of now, you can´t see live video feeds. You should be able to see Macworld Expo live on the iPhone.

[elffir]

Nice pun on "flash in the pan".

[<2cents]

Screw Flash. In fact, can someone recommend a good way to disable Flash in Safari?

Generally speaking, Adobe products have gotten worse on the Mac. Everything seems so bloated now, sort of like Microsoft products.

[TenoBell]

I seem to recall having a 300 MHz G3 with 192 MiB of RAM (in 1999) that ran Macromedia Flash just fine. The iPhone's processor runs at 600 MHz and has 1 GiB of RAM.

The desktop G3 was not constrained by by CPU runtime or power conservation.

What exactly has been added to flash since 1999, functionality wise? The only significant thing I can think of is H.264 support, and the iPhone is clearly capable of handling H.264.

Flash couldn't show video at all in 1999. There have been changes

This article isn't exactly true with regards to Flash Lite or Flash on a mobile device.

From what I understand about Flash Lite is that it is not capable of showing all flash content and uses excessive amount of memory and power as it works.

Apple needs to get Quicktime streaming to work on the iPhone. As of now, you can´t see live video feeds. You should be able to see Macworld Expo live on the iPhone.

Not all QuickTime video works on the iPhone. The streaming video has to be of the right size and bit rate to play within the iPhones limited resources.

Apple lists iPhone video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile

[hezekiahb]

Originally Posted by cherrypop

ASCII: Couldn't agree more. And given what Apple has invested in QT and perhaps what they stand to lose, why would SJ want Flash on the iPhone?

What Apple should (and might well be trying to do) is negotiate with Adobe to buy Flash.

That all said, I hate Flash, but I want it on my iPhone until QT takes over.

The QT conspiracy comments make no sense folks. If it really was a QT conspiracy on the part of Steve Jobs wouldn't Adobe be crying wolf over it? Think about it.

I think the issues with flash might actually be in Adobe's long history with Macromedia. Seems to me that Macromedia was rocketing in it's flash development until Adobe started feeling threatened & bought them out. Past few years the releases seem like they've only brought minor improvements & development quality seems like it has really gone down hill.

I really think Adobe just doesn't care all that much about flash anymore, they just wanted to ensure their creative suite monopoly on the graphics world.

[Keepitreal]

The article was a good read, although slightly biased against Flash!? + the comments here against flash are far from factual!

WHATS THE REAL REASON FOR THIS?

Apple is taking you all for fools...Apple just want's to OWN the Application Software Development stack amongst other controls!

FastLaneJB is in the correct lane and driving like a true pro, he said:

This isn't entirely accurate
This article isn't exactly true with regards to Flash Lite or Flash on a mobile device. For instance I had a Windows Mobile phone many years ago which had a Flash plugin for Pocket Internet Explorer. I don't know up to what version of Flash this supported but it played Flash animations at the time just fine. This was before I'd even heard of YouTube. That phone had a 400Mhz ARM9 processor and 64MB RAM.

The Nokia N95 8GB has a firmware now which has Flash Lite 3 added to it along with a plugin for it's WebKit based browser. This allows this phone to play inline Flash videos on YouTube and other sites without problems. This device has a 330Mhz ARM11 core CPU and 128MB RAM, still slower than the iPhone's processor which as far as I know is a 400Mhz ARM11 unit.

[ajmas]

I can remember having a P4 based PC at work, with 2 GB RAM, which would slow to a crawl when opening certain web pages. Flash adverts can be very CPU intensive, having been designed in certain cases by people with a notion of design, but little notion in good programming. Now add five of these CPU hogs to one page and you have a computer that is suffering for nothing.

I often find sites that have been written in Flash that have everything in presentation, but nothing that you want to see. Certain things like games and movies players are acceptable.

BTW One up and coming technology is SVG. These is not necessarily a Flash alternative, but since you can mix it with Javascript, certain things can be approximated.

[digitalclips]

Originally Posted by <2cents

Screw Flash. In fact, can someone recommend a good way to disable Flash in Safari?

Generally speaking, Adobe products have gotten worse on the Mac. Everything seems so bloated now, sort of like Microsoft products.

I agree. In fact, if Apple only had a photo editor half as powerful as PS I would not need anything from Adobe these days.

[wbrasington]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

This is not necessarily true.

Adobe Flash, like most modern desktop software, is a horribly bloated, convoluted, memory-leaking, CPU-hogging piece of crap.

I seem to recall having a 300 MHz G3 with 192 MiB of RAM (in 1999) that ran Macromedia Flash just fine. The iPhone's processor runs at 600 MHz and has 1 GiB of RAM.

What exactly has been added to flash since 1999, functionality wise? The only significant thing I can think of is H.264 support, and the iPhone is clearly capable of handling H.264.

So actually, Adobe really should focus on streamlining and optimising Flash. It is possible to make full-blooded Flash work on the iPhone, they'd just have to make the underlying architecture "not shit (TM)". Of course, this would benefit desktop users as well as iPhone users. I guess the problem is that Adobe would have to hire decent software programmers, and it seems like there's probably only 3 in the entire world.

I think we can all assume your G3 still had a working fan in it to keep it cool.
Now that we're done with that, forget about flash on the iPhone.
Just move along, nothing to see here.....

[digitalclips]

Originally Posted by allblue

@Mr H

Much as I respect your effort, I'm not sure your sig is quite right. 'It has' becomes the possessive pronoun spelt 'its' i.e 'belonging to it' doesn't it? In which case, you're going to have to change your sig there, otherwise they're going to get it wrong in their posts aren't they?

... and let's not forget the complications that arise when names ending with 's' get possessive and plural possessive... I never remember how to do this ... is it 'Jobs' new black shirt' and 'Jobs's new black shirts'? Or am I totally lost here? What about the entire Jobs family? 'All the Jobs's new black shirts'. Is that right? If you tell me I shan't get it wrong again. Or is that sha'n't?

[S10]

Originally Posted by digitalclips

... and let's not forget the complications that arise when names ending with 's' get possessive and plural possessive... I never remember how to do this ... is it 'Jobs' new black shirt' and 'Jobs's new black shirts'? Or am I totally lost here? What about the entire Jobs family? 'All the Jobs's new black shirts'. Is that right? If you tell me I shan't get it wrong again. Or is that sha'n't?

Yep, It has been raining = the rain belongs to it.

[Dick Applebaum]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

What's with the modern obsession of putting an apostrophe before any letter "s" that appears at the end of a word? The man's name is "Jobs".

Apostrophes are simple - they are used to indicate either missing letters or possession. Missing letters take precedence. So:
• it's = it is or it has, its = belonging to it
• If it's plural, it doesn't have an apostrophe

One April Fools day, MacRumors changed all the nicknames they assign to posters to a "pirate" theme: cabin boy, buccaneer, etc.

The next day the old nicknames were back: demi-god, guru, newbie...

One poster said that he was sorry that MR had abandoned the seafaring names because:

"he didn't want to leave his shipmate's behind."

[dmber]

Originally Posted by digitalclips

... and let's not forget the complications that arise when names ending with 's' get possessive and plural possessive... I never remember how to do this ... is it 'Jobs' new black shirt' and 'Jobs's new black shirts'? Or am I totally lost here? What about the entire Jobs family? 'All the Jobs's new black shirts'. Is that right? If you tell me I shan't get it wrong again. Or is that sha'n't?

punctuate it how you say it.

Jobs's

"jobziz"

his last name isn't Job. so it's not jobz. it's jobziz.

[delany]

While this article makes some interesting points - there is obviously more to this than technical constraints.

- There are certain applications that Steve/Apple, for whatever reason, have never really supported - games perhaps being the biggest of these - and these coincide rather neatly with the areas in which Flash is strong. Casual gaming on the web is simply a non starter without Flash. While I can see Jobs’ point when it comes to Mac computers, I think this is a fairly foolish oversight when it comes to portable devices that are intended as 'fun' media hubs. Casual gaming should be bang slap in the middle of the iTouch market and restricting it to bespoke games (delivered through iTunes?) is, I believe, a big error.

- If recent reports are to true, Steve J wants to control development and delivery of applications on the iPhone. Allowing Flash completely undermines this policy. Adobe is strongly pushing Flash based technologies for RMA and, whatever Flash's origins and current weaknesses, this is an area Adobe is aggressively pursuing. Allowing Flash essentially allows a parallel application development platform - one that has a much more flexible distribution model, speedy development and low technical barrier to entry. For the consumer these characteristics may be good, they may be bad - but for Jobs they're a spanner in the works.

Personally, I believe that the these are the real issues here - while there are certainly technical constraints (though I'd really don't agree with this article on the extent of them), I feel sure, if they really wanted to, Apple and Adobe could have solved these before now.

[Dick Applebaum]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

What's with the modern obsession of putting an apostrophe before any letter "s" that appears at the end of a word? The man's name is "Jobs".

Originally Posted by digitalclips

... and let's not forget the complications that arise when names ending with 's' get possessive and plural possessive... I never remember how to do this ... is it 'Jobs' new black shirt' and 'Jobs's new black shirts'? Or am I totally lost here? What about the entire Jobs family? 'All the Jobs's new black shirts'. Is that right? If you tell me I shan't get it wrong again. Or is that sha'n't?

You dasn't give up so easily... I think that Jobs' is the correct form of the plural, possessive, and plural possessive

[THT]

Flash is abysmal on my iBook G3, gen 1, with 500 MHz and 256 MB RAM.

There definitely are technical challenges to put Flash 9 on the iPhone. It'll be stupid too. Flash Lite 3 is doable. However, there are definitely strategic interests for Apple not to support Flash. It's a proprietary technology in control of a de facto Internet video "standard" for personal computers. In their mind, they'd rather have H.264 with Web 2.0 (AJAX, HTML5, etc), which are open standards. So, there is opportunity in the mobile space to still make it so. Hence Apple's push for Web 2.0 apps and the lack of Flash and Java.

If they can make H.264 as the video standard and Web 2.0 technologies as the development standard for mobile phones, there's a chance they can move to the desktop/laptop space and displace Flash.

Still, I bet Apple is hedging its bets and probably does have a version of Flash 8/9 or Flash Lite 2/3 working on the iPhone...

[vinney57]

Originally Posted by allblue

@Mr H

Much as I respect your effort, I'm not sure your sig is quite right. 'It has' becomes the possessive pronoun spelt 'its' i.e 'belonging to it' doesn't it? In which case, you're going to have to change your sig there, otherwise they're going to get it wrong in their posts aren't they?

Mr H is correct.

Flash is the worst thing to ever happen to the internets I say. All those stupid f'ing arty animated websites that say NOTHING. And don't get me started on those intrusive advertising banners.

Kill it I say, KILL IT!

[johnny76]

I don't mind not having Flash as much as I would like Apple to open up more Bluetooth profiles like A2DP or the File Transfer protocol. When are we going to get some news on that?

[vinney57]

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

You dasn't give up so easily... I think that Jobs' is the correct form of the plural, possessive, and plural possessive

Also correct.

[vinney57]

Originally Posted by johnny76

I don't mind not having Flash as much as I would like Apple to open up more Bluetooth profiles like A2DP or the File Transfer protocol. When are we going to get some news on that?

You are getting angry about something totally irrelevant to the discussion in hand. You are clearly a woman.

[Hiro]

Last word on the slightly OT apostrophe business:

[GQB]

Originally Posted by libmanj

When it all comes down to it, the iPhone does not provide the "full internet" as promised, and what keeps it from doing so is the absence of Flash.

Add me to the list of those who suggest that Apple and Adobe should get together and figure this one out.

While I understand the need of some to get their fill of battery sucking, animated ads on their iPhone, I must object to defining 'full internet experience' as obligatory support of proprietary extensions.
Last time I looked, Flash was not an open, internet standard and doesn't get to define what the 'full internet experience' is any more than ActiveX components did.

[airtoast]

Big Apple fan here, but little things like this, which can add up, do get very frustrating. Especially since I use Flash on my PSP all the time. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep waiting until 3G, Flash support, games, and shooting video are actually incorporated into the iPhone making it the no-brainer purchase I always thought it was going to be.

[death_dealer]

The author is misinformed or misleading his readers, and Steve Jobs may not be stupid, but he is lying through his teeth about Adobe Flash Player.

If anyone does even a few minutes of research, they would find a host of ARM devices that are running full desktop implementations of Flash just fine, and with a touchscreen. The Archos 605 Wifi is just one example, the Chumby is another. Archos is running full desktop player version 7 on their device and Chumby runs Flash Lite. Both devices have touchscreens, slower processors, and less RAM. But somehow they can MAGICALLY play back Flash animations smoothly. The Archos can view YouTube, MySpace and other Flash sites without problem and neither Adobe or Archos had to jump through technical hoops to make this work. The player isn't "too bloated", or a "cpu and memory hog" like many misonformed people seem to think...it runs perfectly smooth on these devices. You can define all the "standards" you want, but the fact is, a huge portion of the web is now based on Flash and web developers aren't running for AJAX or any of the other alternatives any time soon....

So what is Apple's problem with using Flash on iPhone?

The REAL reason that Flash isn't on iPhone is because Apple wants to control the application stack on the iPhone....it has nothing to do with the bullcrap reasons that Steve Jobs or the author give.

[Kontra]

I explained why WebKit is Apple's answer to Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX here:

Runtime wars (1): Does Apple have an answer to Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX?
http://counternotions.com/2007/11/15/runtime-wars/

Runtime wars (2): Apple’s answer to Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX
http://counternotions.com/2007/11/15...time-answer-2/