Adobe clears up likelihood of Flash for iPhone

[AppleInsider]

While a recent news report stoked anticipation that Apple's iPhone SDK would at last allow for a native version of Flash, Adobe has since said that a solution won't be as simple as suggested earlier this week.

The software developer issued a statement to the press on Wednesday which dampened the high expectations set by a Wall Street Journal account of an Adobe financial conference call, which claimed that the SDK alone was enough for a native version of Flash. A fully functional version that ran within a web browser would require far more integration than the SDK allows, the company says.

"Adobe has evaluated the iPhone SDK and can now start to develop a way to bring Flash Player to the iPhone," the statement reads. "However, to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it. We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits Apple and Adobe’s millions of joint customers, so we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device."

The statement reinforces the design limits set forth by Apple for its development kit for its handheld devices, which have so far complicated Sun's Java development as well as hopes to bring a host of other programs to the device. The iPhone maker currently restricts any third-party software from running in the background or launching executable code of its own, both of which pose immediate problems for an embedded program such as Flash.

Apple has also been selective about which features of its devices can be integrated with outside apps and has reportedly blocked access to music functions entirely for anyone but itself. A Flash application usable from its normal home on the web would require direct access to Safari and the ability to run side-by-side with Apple code.

Regardless of technical capabilities, Adobe has yet to overcome resistance from Apple chief Steve Jobs. The executive quashed short-term hopes for a Flash add-on to the iPhone by rejecting the idea of direct ports of either Flash Lite or a full desktop Flash port, alternately calling them too limited and too slow to work properly with the iPhone's hardware and software.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[trevorlsciact]

no surprises here

[SpamSandwich]

Move along... move along...

[shalako]

If I ever see another flash site it will be too soon. Totally impractical medium.

[suhail]

I for one am not looking forward to Flash on the iPhone, I think the browser works great as it is. Adding processor intensive plug-ins will result in a hampered user experience. Flash has horrible performance on the Mac, and Adobe is taking the MS route by making their apps cpu and memory hogs.

[Booga]

If you don't want Flash on your iPhone, fine. I'm sure it'll be optional. That doesn't mean others don't want to play Scrabulous with their friends. I'm so tired of folks responding to every flash-on-iPhone story with how much they hate flash. Why do you even read the story then?

[mdriftmeyer]

Here is one clue ADOBE:

BRING YOUR CS3 SUITE TO COCOA AND WE'LL BRING FLASH TO THE IPHONE/IPOD TOUCH.

mmmk.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by Booga

... That doesn't mean others don't want to play Scrabulous with their friends. ...

I keep hearing this remark about Scrabulous in the context of Flash on the iPhone over and over again, but if ever there was a use of Flash that is both inappropriate and completely unnecessary Scrabulous is it.

If a simple scrabble game can't be coded with plain old Javascript, Ajax and HTML then the designers really just aren't trying. Add HTML 5.0 into the mix and it could easily look much better than the current Scrabulous game and work faster as well. If the makers of scrabulous weren't already tied up in a law-suit for stealing the game in the first place, they could code an iPhone version *without* using Flash in a weekend if they tried.

Take away the horrible advertisements and the use of Flash for videos, and most of the time you won't miss Flash at all. Safari already supports video embedding right in the HTML and Firefox 3.0 (already in beta), and Explorer 7.0 will as well. There is just no real need for Flash.

[pt123]

I couldn't see myself getting an iphone or itouch. Doesn't seem like the real internet.

[MrShow]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Here is one clue ADOBE:

BRING YOUR CS3 SUITE TO COCOA AND WE'LL BRING FLASH TO THE IPHONE/IPOD TOUCH.

mmmk.

++++ awesome

Fraking Indesign cashes like crazy. Now it's started to delete my preferences too.

[John.B]

Note to Adobe, she isn't really washing her hair every night, its that she's just not that into you.

[iPeon]

Shut up already Adobe and go code for M$. We don't want your bloated code. Please, just go away.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by pt123

I couldn't see myself getting an iphone or itouch. Doesn't seem like the real internet.

If you want to see "not the real internet", spend some time with Windows Mobile. Then get back to us.

[iPeon]

Originally Posted by Booga

If you don't want Flash on your iPhone, fine. I'm sure it'll be optional. That doesn't mean others don't want to play Scrabulous with their friends. I'm so tired of folks responding to every flash-on-iPhone story with how much they hate flash. Why do you even read the story then?

Could it be because Flash tends to be crash prone?
Could it be that we are sick of crappy bloated software from Adobe?
Could it be because Adobe has for a long time time now made Mac users second class citizens?
Could it be that it's because we are just plain sick of Adobe's incompetence?

I don't know.

[melgross]

This updated article is no surprise, because as I've said in the earlier thread, Adobe would work with Apple.

Before anyone says, No way!, one must consider that Jobs never said that Flash wouldn't come to the iPhone/iTouch. He just said that current implementations wouldn't work.

That could have even been an impetus to Adobe to start cracking on new code, something they seem very interested in doing.

[iPeon]

Originally Posted by melgross

Before anyone says, No way!, one must consider that Jobs never said that Flash wouldn't come to the iPhone/iTouch. He just said that current implementations wouldn't work.

That could have even been an impetus to Adobe to start cracking on new code, something they seem very interested in doing.

When I read between the lines what is see him saying is this: "I'm glad current implementations of Flash will not work on the iPhone and I'm going to make sure it never can."

Seriously! Apple is all about user experience, while Adobe is all about me, me, me and to hell with user experience. It's two completely different ideologies.

Flash is annoying. It's main use is for pushing advertisements into your face. That, and busy, clumsy websites that break the conventions associated with normal HTML pages. Flash be gone and die already.

[ikir]

Originally Posted by pt123

I couldn't see myself getting an iphone or itouch. Doesn't seem like the real internet.

Ah ah ah Flash sucks hard. If Adobe/Apple port it to iPhone good, but i can live without. And i think Apple has the right to block things like Flash and Java apps. Just write it for iPhone/iPod touch and bring it to iTunes App Store. Anyway i hope to see a Safari Flash plugin for iPhone.

[samurai1999]

Originally Posted by melgross

This updated article is no surprise, because as I've said in the earlier thread, Adobe would work with Apple.

Before anyone says, No way!, one must consider that Jobs never said that Flash wouldn't come to the iPhone/iTouch. He just said that current implementations wouldn't work.

That could have even been an impetus to Adobe to start cracking on new code, something they seem very interested in doing.

Yes, Jobs said that the Flash was to big, and Flash-Lite basically didn't do enough, and what was needed was 'someting in between'.
- so maybe Apple would be amenable to an Abobe Flash-Lean-but-not-too-Lite?

[ikir]

Originally Posted by iPeon

Could it be because Flash tends to be crash prone?
Could it be that we are sick of crappy bloated software from Adobe?
Could it be because Adobe has for a long time time now made Mac users second class citizens?
Could it be that it's because we are just plain sick of Adobe's incompetence?

I don't know.

100% agree!

[jcatma61]

Adobe = offshore code whores.

what else should we expect from a company that outsourced its coding to India?

They can't even get web 2.0 applications running adequately on their media $erver.

[wbrasington]

It was obvious in the LAST stupid article where they said they now had the SDK and THAT would mean they could move forward with Flash..... well, it was obvious they didn't know what they were getting into.

And those that said I was wrong, and that they COULD go forward.... well.... I told you so.

[troberts]

I know the Devil is in the details but shouldn't it be fairly easy to get Flash, or at least a player, onto the iPhone?

Step #1 - Write a stand-alone player using the SDK without worrying about writing code that can be used on other platforms. If this means a total rewrite, then so be it.

Step #2 - write a plug-in for Safari that stores the URL for the video, the URL of the web page, shuts down Safari, and starts the Flash player.

Step #3 - When the video is done playing the user is offered three options which are 1) Replay video, 2) Save video, and 3) Exit, which will shut down the Flash player and restart Safari where it left off, similar to how music stops playing when you get a phone call and starts playing again after you "hang up".

If a person wants to watch the videos again they can start the player and select it from the list of saved videos, which are just URLS.

[embee]

I bought my wife an iPhone for her birthday last week. We set up her Gmail account and wifi, and the VERY FIRST new message was a friend sending a link to a YouTube video. Of course, she clicked on it, it loaded in Safari, and nothing happened.

When that didn't work, she tried going to the main menu and clicking the YouTube button. It says "YouTube," so why not.

When that didn't work, she came in and asked me, "what's wrong with this thing?"

All I was able to say was "it's politics between Apple and Adobe."

Bad answer.

Her next question: "Does Adobe own YouTube or something?"

"No, Google does."

"But Gmail works."

"Yes, but that's basically an email application, that's different."

"Well, that's lame. They need to fix this."

She's right.

[slawenda@socal.rr.com]

I think one big reason Apple is very hesitant to have flash on the iphone is because it would enable users to listen to satellite radio (XM or Sirius in USA) -- as much as I would like this personally, I don't think Apple would want their iphones to be very nice satellite radio players! (For those of you who didn't know, the online players for XM and Sirius require flash.) Apple is apparently not allowing third party music players on the iphones, and indirectly flash would allow XM and Sirius to play on iphones.

[wbrasington]

Originally Posted by embee

I bought my wife an iPhone for her birthday last week. We set up her Gmail account and wifi, and the VERY FIRST new message was a friend sending a link to a YouTube video. Of course, she clicked on it, it loaded in Safari, and nothing happened.

When that didn't work, she tried going to the main menu and clicking the YouTube button. It says "YouTube," so why not.

When that didn't work, she came in and asked me, "what's wrong with this thing?"

All I was able to say was "it's politics between Apple and Adobe."

Bad answer.

Her next question: "Does Adobe own YouTube or something?"

"No, Google does."

"But Gmail works."

"Yes, but that's basically an email application, that's different."

"Well, that's lame. They need to fix this."

She's right.

I don't think Apple needs to fix the YouTube site.
Hopefully, YouTube will fix itself and then everyone will be happy.

Now, if you have an example of your wife missing out on an advertisement that she wanted to see, you could complain to Apple.
But if Youtube builds around a proprietary product from Adobe that not everyone supports, you should blame YouTube.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by iPeon

When I read between the lines what is see him saying is this: "I'm glad current implementations of Flash will not work on the iPhone and I'm going to make sure it never can."

Seriously! Apple is all about user experience, while Adobe is all about me, me, me and to hell with user experience. It's two completely different ideologies.

Flash is annoying. It's main use is for pushing advertisements into your face. That, and busy, clumsy websites that break the conventions associated with normal HTML pages. Flash be gone and die already.

You can imagine anything you want, it doesn't make it true.

It sounded pretty clear that he wasn't happy with what was out there.

I like Flash, it can be very useful, and ads are ads. Most are going to be annoying. Believe it or not, that's their purpose. When I was in advertizing, many years ago, we knew that often, the most annoying ads were also the most effective ones.

Without those annoying ads, most websites couldn't exist. That's their main, if not only, means of income, so don't be so harsh.

I'm amazed that so many people here are lacking the understanding of basic economics.

[TenoBell]

I bought my wife an iPhone for her birthday last week. We set up her Gmail account and wifi, and the VERY FIRST new message was a friend sending a link to a YouTube video. Of course, she clicked on it, it loaded in Safari, and nothing happened.

This sounds as if something may have been wrong with the link. It should not have done anything in Safari.

When you press a YouTube link it normally opens the YouTube app and plays the video.

[Tofino]

Originally Posted by melgross

You can imagine anything you want, it doesn't make it true.

It sounded pretty clear that he wasn't happy with what was out there.

I like Flash, it can be very useful, and ads are ads. Most are going to be annoying. Believe it or not, that's their purpose. When I was in advertizing, many years ago, we knew that often, the most annoying ads were also the most effective ones.

Without those annoying ads, most websites couldn't exist. That's their main, if not only, means of income, so don't be so harsh.

I'm amazed that so many people here are lacking the understanding of basic economics.

Well, and if it's their only means of supporting their websites and they can't deliver them through proprietary channels, then i'm sure they can change the means and give us non-flash ads. isn't that how supply & demand works? basic economics, no?

[melgross]

Originally Posted by Tofino

Well, and if it's their only means of supporting their websites and they can't deliver them through proprietary channels, then i'm sure they can change the means and give us non-flash ads. isn't that how supply & demand works? basic economics, no?

The question is whether most people care as much as the few who complain here. I doubt it.

While everyone complains about ads, wherever they occur, very few people care that much.

It's the animation of the ads that makes people pay attention. I suppose the animation can be done another way, but then, what would be the difference? People would still complain.

What really annoys me is this new practice of hiving you visit an ad page before you can get to the site itself.

Some sites, including Forbes, which should know better, actually have the nerve of calling it a "welcome screen"!

[mstone]

Originally Posted by iPeon

Could it be because Flash tends to be crash prone?
Could it be that we are sick of crappy bloated software from Adobe?
Could it be because Adobe has for a long time time now made Mac users second class citizens?
Could it be that it's because we are just plain sick of Adobe's incompetence?

I don't know.

Clearly you don't know. Without Adobe many of us would be completely SOL. For me at least, their applications are pure gold. Any software is going to have some issues but I make TONS of money with Adobe apps. Nothing else even comes close. And by the way 'long time Mac users' are mostly the desktop publishers of the world who are totally dependent on Adobe.

[Tofino]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Here is one clue ADOBE:

BRING YOUR CS3 SUITE TO COCOA AND WE'LL BRING FLASH TO THE IPHONE/IPOD TOUCH.

mmmk.

i second that. and i'm sure so does mr jobs. if adobe can drag their heels, so can apple. in the meantime people will find better ways to deliver their content... we didn't have a choice but to wait for adobe to 'embrace' osx, intel macs, and we got used to being treated badly.

improve your apps on the mac first, then we'll talk iphone. and don't think we'll forget being snubbed for years either. i think adobe is more interested in delivering flash for iphone than the rest of us.

google's move to convert youtube content to work on the iphone might be an indication that adobe has more to lose than iphone users have to gain. yes, flash might feel like a standard due to its ubiquity for advertising and video, but things change. there are alternatives for video, quicktime has always better in my experience, and as for ads... well... too bad.

don't get me wrong, i like flash as a concept, but i have not seen many websites use it in a good way. so i sorta appreciate apple's position.

[Blah64]

Originally Posted by Booga
If you don't want Flash on your iPhone, fine. I'm sure it'll be optional. That doesn't mean others don't want to play Scrabulous with their friends. I'm so tired of folks responding to every flash-on-iPhone story with how much they hate flash. Why do you even read the story then?

Originally Posted by iPeon

Could it be because Flash tends to be crash prone?
Could it be that we are sick of crappy bloated software from Adobe?
Could it be because Adobe has for a long time time now made Mac users second class citizens?
Could it be that it's because we are just plain sick of Adobe's incompetence?

Here's a couple more:

1) The more Flash is ubiquitous (or if devs think it is), the more sites will be developed that require it, leading to a sort of defacto-need-to-have. It's really frickin' annoying to have to enable Flash just to see anything at some sites. While we can justifiably call such developers idiots, they will continue to act as such for as long as they keep reading dubious quotes about the so-called 98% Flash availability. And Adobe is great at making sure that bullsh* "fact" keeps getting stated. If people want their sites to be available to iPhone users, and the iPhone does not and will not run Flash, that'll push for better accessibility for everyone.

2) Do any of you folks that want Flash on your iPhone actually use a portable device with Flash? Like a laptop? Flash chews battery like there's no tomorrow on a MacBookPro; how bad do you think it will be on a tiny hand-held? I strongly feel this is really the deal-breaker for Jobs. If you allow an app to sit on your phone that cuts 25% off the battery life (or more, if used much), your specs are significantly harmed. Few reviews will break it down in detail, they'll just report "typical" battery life, and that's what the public will read. We know Apple is working incredibly hard to have the best battery life possible on this device, and this would significantly impact that.

3) Do you guys actually -like- all the flashing/scrolling ads that constantly demand your attention as you try to read an article? Didn't think so. Whattaya bet Steve doesn't either. Once you allow Flash on your device you can't control that and your user experience is degraded.

And as Virgil-TB2 says above, there's no reason a game like Scrabulous needs Flash to run. It wouldn't be "a weekend" to build such a game, but it's readily doable, and would not be a huge effort - particularly since they have an existing app to design to, and the back end is already done.

I don't doubt that some kind of Flash will eventually be available for iPhone, but I also suspect that it will be as a user-download, rather than installed by default. We'll see.

[Tofino]

Originally Posted by mstone

Clearly you don't know. Without Adobe many of us would be completely SOL. For me at least, their applications are pure gold. Any software is going to have some issues but I make TONS of money with Adobe apps. Nothing else even comes close. And by the way 'long time Mac users' are mostly the desktop publishers of the world who are totally dependent on Adobe.

I don't think your positions are contradictory. yes, we depend on adobe, but you have to agree that the last years haven't been good for mac users and adobe's software has got progressively more bloated and developed a serious case of featuritis. it is precisely because we depend on adobe and that as you said 'nothing else comes close', that i think we are entitled to be critical and to expect better.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by Tofino

I don't think your positions are contradictory. yes, we depend on adobe, but you have to agree that the last years haven't been good for mac users and adobe's software has got progressively more bloated and developed a serious case of featuritis. it is precisely because we depend on adobe and that as you said 'nothing else comes close', that i think we are entitled to be critical and to expect better.

Apples association with Adobe goes way back. They were both highly dependent on each other in the old days. Neither would have survived without the other.

But, when Michael Spindler made his fateful decision in 1995 to flood the market with cheaper Macs during the 1995 holiday season, he blew it badly.

He had a million 68040,Macs in stores (that was a lot of machines back then). But they flopped, because people wanted the new PPC machines instead. so, rather than donate machines to schools and libraries, he had them dumped!.

Shortly after that fiasco, IT departments started to dump their Macs.

Adobe,Quark saw the handwriting on the wall, and ported their software over to the PC which was beginning to become viable for the work that had almost only been done on the Mac.

With the Mac user base moving to the PC over the years, what was Adobe supposed to do? Favor Mac users? Of course not. They had to do what they had to do for THEIR company.

As the Mac began to come back in the mid 2000's, Adobe has begun to devote more attention to its Mac user base.

But don't ever think that one company "owes" something to another. It doesn't. If Apple hadn't caused its own problems, Adobe, Quark, and others, might never have ported over to the PC in the first place.

There were many things that Apple could have done to support Adobe, but didn't. The creation, with MS, or Truetype, was intended to break Adobe's control of Type 1 type creation. Adobe rightly considered that to be an attack on what was at the time, its core business. That let to distrust of Apple.

It's a two way street.

[pmjoe]

Originally Posted by slawenda@socal.rr.com

I think one big reason Apple is very hesitant to have flash on the iphone is because it would enable users to listen to satellite radio (XM or Sirius in USA) -- as much as I would like this personally, I don't think Apple would want their iphones to be very nice satellite radio players! (For those of you who didn't know, the online players for XM and Sirius require flash.) Apple is apparently not allowing third party music players on the iphones, and indirectly flash would allow XM and Sirius to play on iphones.

I have Flash blocked on my Mac, and the Sirius player works just fine. I think it does use a Windows Media format though.

[pmjoe]

Originally Posted by melgross

It's the animation of the ads that makes people pay attention.

You misspelt install Flash blockers.

[iPeon]

Originally Posted by mstone

Clearly you don't know. Without Adobe many of us would be completely SOL. For me at least, their applications are pure gold. Any software is going to have some issues but I make TONS of money with Adobe apps. Nothing else even comes close. And by the way 'long time Mac users' are mostly the desktop publishers of the world who are totally dependent on Adobe.

You are assuming that I don't know. That you (we) make TONS of money with Adobe apps does not change the fact that their software has become bloated and buggy. Adobe's apps were awesome at one point. Very true. Unfortunately Adobe has been Microsofted.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by pmjoe

You misspelt install Flash blockers.

I have been saying that if Flash does come to the phone, there should be a way to turn it off.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by iPeon

You are assuming that I don't know. That you (we) make TONS of money with Adobe apps does not change the fact that their software has become bloated and buggy. Adobe's apps were awesome at one point. Very true. Unfortunately Adobe has been Microsofted.

Apple's OS has also become bloated and buggy. That doesn't mean that it isn't the best general purpose OS out there.

The same is true with most of Adobe's apps.

The problem is that with the addition of features that many people want and need, comes bloat, and bloat means more bugs. It's inevitable.

[iPeon]

Originally Posted by melgross

Apple's OS has also become bloated and buggy. That doesn't mean that it isn't the best general purpose OS out there.

The same is true with most of Adobe's apps.

The problem is that with the addition of features that many people want and need, comes bloat, and bloat means more bugs. It's inevitable.

True, but there's a huge difference between the two. Photoshop takes forever to launch, virtually brings my computer to a crawl, corrupts files and does all sorts of weirdness to my preferences. Yes, iTunes, as an example, has become bloated as well, but it works just fine. That's the difference.