Filed under: Software, Video, Internet Tools, iPhone
It's official: No Flash support on the iPhone (yet)
Our sources at WWDC are reporting that, for now, there is officially no Flash support on the iPhone. Apparently, in the State of the Media address yesterday, the announcement was made that: "There will be no Flash support at the moment on the iPhone." Developers are being told not to serve video via Flash, as there simply isn't a player built for the phone yet.
On the upside, the word 'yet' is apparently being used liberally, so things might look better for Flash on the iPhone sometime down the road.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ron said 12:22PM on 6-12-2007
I did see that Flash is available as a plug-in to the new Safari for Windows beta. Could Flash work as a plug-in to Safari for the iPhone?
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AJ said 12:24PM on 6-12-2007
i dont get it... i thought Apple and Adobe share the same bed these days! Sort it out guys! How can you run an ad on tv saying that it offers a full web experience but not have flash player!
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Cory G said 12:36PM on 6-12-2007
Flash is Macromedia and not Adobe - but still. I think they could and should have something out my June 29th, give macromedia an iPhone and let them get busy,
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required said 12:39PM on 6-12-2007
a lot of folks don't like flash so this will not be a problem for them nor will it alter the validity of their full web experience
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Metanaut said 12:39PM on 6-12-2007
@3: Macromedia is Adobe.
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required said 12:40PM on 6-12-2007
Cory, Macromedia has been absorbed by Adobe.
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josh k said 12:41PM on 6-12-2007
flash is made by adobe. they acquired macromedia.
i do want to hear from the apple camp why the flash player has been an issue. is it simply a performance issue? there was also talk of apple creating their own flash player for the iphone? why?
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shon Dempsey said 12:44PM on 6-12-2007
Well I think this is another big disappointment (dont get me wrong, im still buying one). But flash is pretty much a standard in the web these days. So many sites use it for streaming video, or whatever. I also thought that Apple was heralding Safari on the iPhone as "the internet", not a "baby internet". While im sure this will be remedied soon, its pretty disappointing. Arent we talking full blown safari and OSX here?
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B deR West said 12:48PM on 6-12-2007
Plush, the Web iPhone commercial displays the Times, complete with flash-based ad. I'm pretty sure the rumor sites noticed this and posted on it last week. So I guess it wasn't a flash ad?
And remember, the whole idea behind having OS X on the phone is Apple can issue updates and boom, everyone's phone runs Flash.
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required said 12:51PM on 6-12-2007
all flash does to the web experience is make you stop, and upgrade their plug-in, that and take away end-user control
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frogbat said 1:03PM on 6-12-2007
interesting - i can imagine that performance might be an issue - they seem to have come on in leaps and bounds on intel macs - actually my 1st gen single cpu g5 can handle playing flash better... somehow i doubt the iphone's cpu is that powerful either
from a web dev's point of view this ain't too great - i use flash for interfaces and menus in small sites and have created some sites entirely in flash.
oh and a little site will not be able to be used - youtube.com
1 question though - can't quicktime some sort of older flash movies?
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smqt said 1:05PM on 6-12-2007
I don't like Flash that much either, but I agree it should be supported if Apple says there offering the "real internet" instead of the "kinda-sorta-internet".
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Skoalbandit said 1:09PM on 6-12-2007
If this is true it is disappointing. The full internet is one that has flash.
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richard Lawrence said 1:57PM on 6-12-2007
#9 - Actually, if you disable plug-ins on your browser, ads from the NYTimes web site will still display - they just won't be ads made in flash. I am surprised no one noticed, but watch the most recent iPhone ad and look at the NY Times page very, very closely you will notice an AT&T ad and a Nike+iPod ad.
The area that I am suspicious about is the area in lower left hand side of the Times' web page. That space IS Flash and in the commercial it shows up, but if you disable plug-ins so that Flash doesn't run on your computer, it doesn't show up.
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Adnium said 2:02PM on 6-12-2007
The current version of Quicktime supports flash-video playback via a checkbox option in the preferences. Seeing as the iPhone runs OS X, and presumably runs Quicktime in the background for video support (in addition to Core Animation), can't Quicktime itself run flash? Or a current flash plugin? Will Perian (www.perian.org) be supported? It would work.
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chris furniss said 2:08PM on 6-12-2007
If it can't play youtube movies... that's a pretty big deal breaker.
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mitch said 2:12PM on 6-12-2007
flash is becoming the "web 2.0" rich internet application standard deployement tool - it seems to me to be a "must have" for the iPhone. Hope they get it done soon :)
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Jon Crosby said 2:17PM on 6-12-2007
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=241
Check out the info in the updated section at the end:
"...the browser would ship with plug-ins, but Apple would be writing them all in-house."
I wonder if this still applies and if it will match the Java situation on the Mac from years ago?
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andres said 3:09PM on 6-12-2007
look i think an iphone without flash is weaker but knocking on Apple for promising the full web is ridiculous, last time I check W3C Flash is not a web standard. This is what can happen when things are build in proprietary solutions. A translation app like rosetta would be to slow on the iphone so we won't get Flash until Adobe ports Flash for osX(intel) to Flash for osX(ARM).
If anyone has noticed Safari 3 passes the Acid2 test just fine and if the iphone's safari is just as good... kudos to them.
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Jacques Lema said 3:32PM on 6-12-2007
I don't see the problem?
All one has to do is write a Flash plugin using the excellent available iPhone SDK: Javascript and CSS! You just have to use the canvas object and a few billions lines of javascript and there you are.
Sigh.
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