Filed under: Multimedia, Internet Tools, iPhone, iPod touch
Flash on its way for the iPhone (again)?
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Adobe has confirmed that it's developing a version of Flash for the iPhone, and it's "a certainty" that it will be included in MobileSafari, according to Paul Boutin of Valleywag. Color me skeptical.
Paul Betlem (this story is replete with Pauls, it appears) from Adobe stopped short of saying it will be included on the iPhone, but instead said the ball was in Apple's court. If Apple approves, Adobe will have the player available shortly.
We knew Adobe was working hard on a version of Flash Player for the iPhone and iPod touch. The "closed system" of MobileSafari was making it difficult for them to build a plug-in for a browser that doesn't officially support plug-ins. Having Apple's buy-in on the project is an absolute requirement.
It remains to be seen how lean Flash Player will get in order to provide good video playback (for example) without draining the battery in 30 seconds flat. Will Adobe favor performance over economy? Or vice versa?
[Via Valleywag.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Justin said 7:19AM on 10-01-2008
Im reading this post on the way to school, and i just hope that apples approves it.
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bryon brock said 3:56PM on 10-01-2008
Yea yea we've been hearing comments form Adobe execs about an upcoming flash player for awhile now http://www.iphone-hacks.com/2008/06/23/progress-being-made-for-flash-support-on-the-iphone/
KeynoteKen said 7:31AM on 10-01-2008
"What remains to be seen how lean Flash Player will get in order to provide good video playback (for example) without draining the battery in 30 seconds flat."
What gets lost in the translation is that Adobe isn't talking about the Flash Player, they're talking about Flash Lite. If users think that the iPhone already doesn't display "the whole internet", wait until they discover that, even with Flash Lite, they STILL don't get the whole internet.
There is no cellular phone currently that includes the full Flash Player.
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Josh G said 9:59AM on 10-03-2008
Actually, that's not *quite* true:
My LG KS20 with Opera 9.5 and Flash Lite 3.1 runs "the whole internet". Full in-browser flash support, without an issue.
:)
KeynoteKen said 11:30AM on 10-03-2008
Thanks for the info. I looked up Flash Lite here.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/faq/
While it's better than it used to be, two of those bullet points discuss differences between Flash 8/Flash 9 and Flash Lite 3, which says to me that there are still pages that won't work. Don't get me wrong, it's still a HECKUVA lot better than the zero percent of those sites that the iPhone renders :) , but there's still not a cellular phone device that can run Flash Player 9 in full.
Ed said 7:36AM on 10-01-2008
There's no real reason it'll be an issue, as long as they code it well. They've got the advantage that h.264 can be processed in hardware, which accounts for the more strenuous video playback. I'm not sure if the standard 'YouTube-style' video can be done in hardware though.
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TMM said 7:44AM on 10-01-2008
Flash, at least in it's current state, is a big no-no for mobile devices.
What sense does it make, btw, do play video through an interpreter, when you can just stream it through a native player, with better quality and less energy use.
I love that Apple forced developers to make iPhone optimized version of web sites. There are so many awesome, usefull, streamlined web apps: it's awesome. You can even use them through Fluid as a desktop app.
The only thing that would force Apple to let this - let's say sub-optimal - plug-in on it's device would be other devices supporting it AND eating awy sales from the iPhone.
And that won't happen. Not in the near future. Because Flash sucks. A lot on desktop - 50% cpu for vga video? - and more so on mobile.
CSS and Javascript, a long with the WebKit animations are so much more usefull right now.
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Dan Woods said 8:01AM on 10-01-2008
I personally hope Apple say no.
I'd rather have fast, efficient websites on my mobile device than the convenience of animated banner ads and poorly written video playback applets.
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AK said 8:03AM on 10-01-2008
Is there anything we can do to help speed the process. That's is the only thing I've been critizing apple for not having on the iphone. I would love a flash player!!!
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Sam said 8:20AM on 10-01-2008
I'd love to see sort of an "opt-in" design, where a website would display a placeholder of Flash content and you could designate websites where you do or don't want the animation to load, or even simpler have an icon on the page which you would have to touch to get the Flash animation. That way, the device only uses power on the Flash elements that the user wants to see.
I'm pretty much talking out of my ass here.
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Viper007Bond said 8:35AM on 10-01-2008
+1
Best of both worlds -- the little icon is shown, you click it to activate the Flash on your own choice.
lackofcolour said 8:58AM on 10-01-2008
If it means I'll have to put up with Flash ads on my iPhone, I say "no thanks!"
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DaveyJJ said 9:02AM on 10-01-2008
John Gruber posted an article this morning that agrees with what I've been saying for months now.
There is no way Apple will allow Flash on the iPhone/touch because 99% of the indie/2D game development and game sales on the App Store would cease. There is no way someone's going to waste their time writing games in Xcode when they are up against any of the dozens of brilliant Flash game makers like Nitrome and their ilk who would completely circumvent Apple's store by offering far better games, many for free.
Add in the fact that there are a handful of products that wrap SWF files into standalone apps (Screentime's mProjector etc) that would then completely remove Apple from making a profit on games or other Flash-based apps and you now see why Flash is unlikely.
Apple isn't going to give up millions in revenue to see Flash on the iPhone, no way, unless Adobe drives a few dump trucks full of cash to their doors.
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Galley said 9:07AM on 10-01-2008
Flash already bogs down my system for 10-20 seconds at a time. Now I can look forward to the same experience on my iPhone. Wheee!
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ClassicGuy911 said 9:29AM on 10-01-2008
Oh please please please!!! APPLE YOU MUST APPROVE! With this my iPhone would be practically complete except for copy/ paste.... But I could live with out that for flash.
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dennis said 9:35AM on 10-01-2008
Adobe must have been working on Flash for the iPhone OS with the same mentality that they released Mobile Flash with CS4. Hopefully Adobe's attentiveness to the needs of mobile devices that we'll have a good working integration with Mobile Safari out of this.
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Chris Elam said 9:52AM on 10-01-2008
How about apple works on MMS before worrying about flash and copy and paste. It's 2008 and my phone does all this great stuff, but I can't send or receive picture messages.
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Josh said 12:06PM on 10-01-2008
Yeah, because, you know.. It's apple that making the flash player... not those folks at Adobe... so they can't possibly be working on other things while the flash player is in the works...
Chris Elam said 8:40AM on 10-03-2008
Yes, apple doesn't make flash. But as the article says, it's a closed system and as flash isn't a stand alone app but actually designed to run inside of safari, they will need apple's help. So yes, someone from apple will need to help them. That may be helping them code, or it might be as simple as send over a non-public SDK. I don't know. I do know that for me, sending mms messages is more important than copy/paste and flash. Thanks for the flame though.
brian said 9:52AM on 10-01-2008
The biggest problem with iPhone Flash, which I haven't heard anyone else say, is that even if you get Flash *running* on the iPhone, it still won't be *usable* at all for 99% of the content that's currently out there!
Most interactive Flash things (especially games) require fast and/or accurate mousing and/or keyboarding--and on the iPhone, neither mousing nor keyboarding could be described as fast and accurate--for the most part, not even fast OR accurate. (I think the iPhone keyboard and associated software is great, but accurate spelling != accurate controlling. If you want to spell 'ass' but you type 'aas' the iPhone will nicely correct you. If you're playing a game that uses WASD as control keys, hitting AAS (left-left-down) will NOT produce the same result as hitting ASS (left-back-down.))
And what about games that require keyboarding AND mousing, or *gasp* letters AND numbers?!? No sense mentioning, of course, that the virtual keyboard covers half the screen.
And even if Flash were to get a standalone fullscreen player, most Flash games are authored at pixel dimensions in excess of the iPhone's physical 320x480 resolution, and are designed for ~100 ppi screens. So take a large game, scale it down electronically to fit 480x320, then add in the physical change of a ~160 ppi screen, and you've got intricate content being shown at about half the physical size it was intended. It just won't work.
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