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Flash coming to the iPhone, if Adobe has anything to say about it

The rumors are apparently true, after a fashion -- despite reports of Jobs' opposition to the idea, Adobe has told the Wall Street Journal that after reviewing the iPhone's SDK, their CEO says they can bring Flash to the device all by themselves. It'll be super interesting to see if Adobe tries to make an end run around Apple to get their platform on the iPhone via the SDK, or if Apple cooperates to let them do it (Flash, for all of its foibles, is definitely a big part of the current internet).

But at this point it seems like Adobe is dead set on getting Flash on the iPhone whether Apple consents or not. We'll watch this one as it develops obviously -- by the time the rest of the SDK-driven apps come around in June, browsing Flash sites might be the last thing on everyone's minds.

[Via Engadget]

The rumors are apparently true, after a fashion -- despite reports of Jobs' opposition to the idea, Adobe has told the Wall Street Journal...
 

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Austin

Good luck playing games w/o the arrow keys.
think about how many games require that?
pretty much all of them.

but hey you want an unstable device, go for it.
im keepin it off my ipod.

i have a feeling the only way it will be half way decent is if they do go through apple,which of course means wed pay for it

March 19 2008 at 2:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
henrrik

First of all it seems neither Flash or Java is possible without a blessing by Apple since the SDK terms state that:

"No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)"

Either way, it isn't possible to create browser plugins for Mobile Safari using the SDK so a Flash interpreter would be a strictly stand-alone affair and I can't really see any advantage to choosing Flash over the native API for developers in that scenario.

Safari 3.1 supports the HTML5 and tags and I'm sure the next version of Mobile Safari will too. That will provide a highly efficient way to provide support for video and audio embedded in web pages. Getting Youtube, Viddler and the others on board for that shouldn't be too difficult.

March 19 2008 at 2:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to henrrik's comment
henrrik

.. that should read HTML5 video and audio tags, my angle brackets disappeared.

March 19 2008 at 3:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bryan

Flash is the first thing on my mind! I can't wait, excellent!

March 19 2008 at 1:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joseph

@RobK: I'd agree with you, except that the terms are there out in the open. While I certainly am of the opinion that I ought to be able to do whatever I want to with a device I purchased, Apple is well within its legal rights to make up any limits they want. It's up to the consumer to determine whether or not those terms live up to any particular standard.

While I tend to dislike Flash on the whole, I think Adobe's right in at the very least trying to make it happen. The only people I really see bitching about not having Flash on the iPhone are Flash developers; most people simply don't care. The only time it bugs me is when I'm surfing Digg on my iPhone and stumble onto a video site where the video is implemented in Flash.

March 19 2008 at 1:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeremy

I think you left something out of that one sentence.

Flash is a big, ENTIRELY NEGATIVE part of the current internet, WITH NO REDEEMING VALUE WHATSOEVER.

On the desktop, you can just remove the stupid plugin to make the web usable again. On the iPhone or iPod, you don't have that luxury. Let's keep this crap off there!

March 19 2008 at 12:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
TOM

Scaling desktop sized Flash Content down to fit an iphone would make everything look terrible.

They have their work cut out for them.

March 19 2008 at 12:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ryan Sandberg

Instead of working on something that might not work, why don't they work on getting Shockwave ported to Intel, so that we don't have to run Rosetta to get Shockwave?

March 19 2008 at 12:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Blaktornado

Good! Apple can't refuse. Apple needs Adobe and the last thing they'll want to do is piss them off.

March 19 2008 at 12:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Stevensnewest

OH MY GOD FINALLY!!

once this is released, bye bye windows! :D

March 19 2008 at 11:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CZW

If the supposed Flash plugin is anything like the one I've had to endure on Tiger & Leopard it won't be going anywhere near my iPhone. I've lost track of the times Safari has crashed blaming the Flash plugin.

I'm definitely in the 'Not on my iPhone!' camp.

March 19 2008 at 11:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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