Flash on the iPhone again sounding like wishful thinking
Two weeks ago it sounded like Adobe was rounding a corner on its way to delivering Flash for the iPhone, but new comments from the software maker are anything but reassuring.
An Adobe spokeswoman told Dow Jones Tuesday (today) that Flash Lite needs more help from Apple than iPhone maker has traditionally afforded its developers. She then refused to confirm whether Apple and Adobe are working together, possibly signaling that the two are not working as closely as previously thought.
Late last month, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen said the iPhone maker was collaborating with his company on a "hard technical challenge." His comment, "The onus is on [Adobe] to deliver," seems to disagree with the spokeswoman's assertion that Adobe still needs more help.
The software maker recently released a new version of Flash Lite that supports high definition videos, but not the iPhone.
Apple declined comment for the Dow Jones report; however, its continuing reticence to help Flash Lite along should come as no surprise. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker has long encouraged developers to use open standards on the device in an effort to promote interoperability and cross platform independence for the next generation of internet applications.
The iPhone and Mac maker has been disappointed in the past with Adobe prioritizing its Windows plug-in at the expense of the Mac version, which fell behind in performance and features. Apple was likely trying to avoid the same problems spilling over to the iPhone, backing up Steve Jobs' criticisms of the "too slow" desktop version and the crippled capability of Flash Lite, which can't fully run content written for the desktop. It could also be prone to memory leaks and overworking the processor.
An Apple developer document published two Junes ago listed Flash as an "unsupported technology" and told devs, "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 went on to recommend CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax instead. Apple has taken up an effort to remove Flash from its own corporate site and other products, and it teamed with Google to use the H.264 standard instead of Flash on the iPhone's YouTube app.
Taken together, these signs suggest an iPhone with Flash support is highly unlikely despite Adobe's persistence.
For more, see the AppleInsider series Flash Wars.
An Adobe spokeswoman told Dow Jones Tuesday (today) that Flash Lite needs more help from Apple than iPhone maker has traditionally afforded its developers. She then refused to confirm whether Apple and Adobe are working together, possibly signaling that the two are not working as closely as previously thought.
Late last month, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen said the iPhone maker was collaborating with his company on a "hard technical challenge." His comment, "The onus is on [Adobe] to deliver," seems to disagree with the spokeswoman's assertion that Adobe still needs more help.
The software maker recently released a new version of Flash Lite that supports high definition videos, but not the iPhone.
Apple declined comment for the Dow Jones report; however, its continuing reticence to help Flash Lite along should come as no surprise. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker has long encouraged developers to use open standards on the device in an effort to promote interoperability and cross platform independence for the next generation of internet applications.
The iPhone and Mac maker has been disappointed in the past with Adobe prioritizing its Windows plug-in at the expense of the Mac version, which fell behind in performance and features. Apple was likely trying to avoid the same problems spilling over to the iPhone, backing up Steve Jobs' criticisms of the "too slow" desktop version and the crippled capability of Flash Lite, which can't fully run content written for the desktop. It could also be prone to memory leaks and overworking the processor.
An Apple developer document published two Junes ago listed Flash as an "unsupported technology" and told devs, "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 went on to recommend CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax instead. Apple has taken up an effort to remove Flash from its own corporate site and other products, and it teamed with Google to use the H.264 standard instead of Flash on the iPhone's YouTube app.
Taken together, these signs suggest an iPhone with Flash support is highly unlikely despite Adobe's persistence.
For more, see the AppleInsider series Flash Wars.
Comments
Adobe sees its outgunned and is fighting to keep Flash relevant in the future.
Google, Palm, Mozilla, and Apple are all working to improve javascript engines and building new javascript frameworks. Adobe is essentially working on Flash all by itself.
Adobe sees its outgunned and is fighting to keep Flash relevant in the future.
And Mozilla gets a bulk of its income from Google...
IF, adobe can sort its shit out and release an optimised version of flash for ALL platforms this would be best but, tbh, Adobe seem incapable of releasing anything that is optimised.
I guess that's what happens when you save it until the last minute.
Then again, I really don't miss those dancing chick banner ads telling me I can get 0% financing on my next mortgage.
* Not slow
* Not a power hog
* Not the buggiest part of the browser
* Not crippled/Lite (but a "video-only" plugin might still be useful)
I'd expect Apple to be open to Flash support if those hurdles were cleared by Adobe.
My main desire for Flash was for my own site... which is now redone so that iPhone users get WebKit CSS animation while everyone else gets Flash. Kind of a pain to do that, but it's done now.
Then again, I really don't miss those dancing chick banner ads telling me I can get 0% financing on my next mortgage.
Ha! That's hillarious, you (or anyone) being able to get another mortgage...
Unless IE can be wiped off the face of the Earth and all browsers can score 100% on Acid3, these problems will remain with standard technologies. Given that Microsoft is at the same time improving IE and refusing to implement SVG, coding to one set of web standards will not be enough to ensure cross-browser applications.
On the other, RIA frameworks like Flash offer one runtime, and one test environment. All RIA applications run identically across browsers and operating systems.
There are 3 RIA frameworks:
1) Flash/Flex
2) Silverlight
3) JavaFX
The problem with Flash is that it sucks computing resources like crazy, despite claims that it's a "smaller, more efficient" runtime than Java. It's closed source and proprietary. There's no mobile component that works off the same runtime (Flash Lite requires totally different applications to be written).
The problem with Silverlight is that it's supported by Microsoft, and developers need to be part of the Microsoft ecosystem. Linux is not officially supported as a platform, except for the unauthorized Moonlight/Mono hack. It's also closed-source and proprietary. There's no mobile component.
With JavaFX, Apple has a chance to support the most open RIA framework. Parts of JavaFX, including the compiler, have been open sourced, with more to follow. What's more, the runtime for the mobile and desktop versions of the framework are the same, with some different APIs between the two environments.
Apple's going to have to invest in an RIA technology sooner or later.
Google, Palm, Mozilla, and Apple are all working to improve javascript engines and building new javascript frameworks. Adobe is essentially working on Flash all by itself.
Adobe sees its outgunned and is fighting to keep Flash relevant in the future.
Fast javascript + SVG will do for the fancy 2D animated features in the future.
The HTML5 video tag will replace flash for the video uses online.
The most useful thing that Adobe could do is provide a flash video codec for the iPhone, and then Apple could parse flash video files to extract the video and show it without any of the flash gumpf.
The most annoying thing recently are streaming video flash adverts. Why? What a complete waste of bandwidth. They play automatically as well. Flash used to be neat, now it's a noose on the internet.
Apple's going to have to invest in an RIA technology sooner or later.
I think that's called "writing an iPhone application".
There's nothing stopping you calling web services directly from your native application, that's how applications like blogging tools and the like work. I'd hope that the iPhone has HTTP Client classes, or at least SOAP classes. This is also how Android works (although they just needed to port the simple Java HTTPClient API).
i don't want flash, iphone is the new paradigm, and let them use open standards as suggested by apple. adobe is fightling to overcome its ignoring apple for so long.
The ability to make rich internet applications, media playback, and animation is being worked on. It will come as their is more development being invested in javascript than in Flash.
Internet Explorer does not hold the position as the gateway browser it once did. IE's dominnance on the desktop is quickly waning. IE has no position on mobile devices. As we go into the future IE will have little to no power to dictate which frameworks are used.
The fact that javascript is divided into different test environments at this point is a strength as the major developers are in competition to leap frog each other in improving javascript speed and performance. That competition effectively pushes javascript to a place where it can supplant and replace Flash.
Apple's efforts to support web standards such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are admirable, but these technologies will only go so far for delivering rich internet applications (RIAs). The problem is that those technologies are limited insofar as providing rich technology, especially media and animations. There isn't a standard runtime environment, since there are several different browsers to test against. The major problem is Internet Explorer, including IE 6, which is just an absolute pain to test against (I know, I used to be a web developer).
Unless IE can be wiped off the face of the Earth and all browsers can score 100% on Acid3, these problems will remain with standard technologies. Given that Microsoft is at the same time improving IE and refusing to implement SVG, coding to one set of web standards will not be enough to ensure cross-browser applications.
On the other, RIA frameworks like Flash offer one runtime, and one test environment. All RIA applications run identically across browsers and operating systems.
The most annoying thing recently are streaming video flash adverts. Why? What a complete waste of bandwidth. They play automatically as well. Flash used to be neat, now it's a noose on the internet.
Even the latest CS4 is a ridiculous money grab by Adobe considering its poor new features or overdue fixes. More importantly, Adobe has done little to advance Flash or any other products it acquired in its purchase of Macromedia a few years back.
That Adobe feels slighted by Apple's lack of interest in helping Flash get on the iPhone is nothing more than a good old "taste of your own medicine", IMHO. I honestly hope Flash never gets on the iPhone...at least that will be one place where I don't have to worry about Adobe!!
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