Adobe: Flash for iPhone might be a little harder than we thought

It seems that Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen isn't a developer for the firm -- or at the very least, he doesn't have a full appreciation for the height of the fence surrounding the iPhone SDK's walled garden. The company and on-again, off-again Apple chum solidly backpedaled on the chief's comments regarding Flash for the iPhone that were made just a day earlier, saying that "...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." For what it's worth, Adobe does say that it's still very much interested in doing up a Flash client, it just needs a little extra help from Apple on the side to make it happen -- so if we see this package pop up in the App Store later this year, we'll know that at least one company's been given a free pass to break the rules.

[Isaac @ Mar 19th 2008 10:41PM]

Why do you toy with my heart engadget?

[Dave @ Mar 19th 2008 11:45PM]

Check out these Adobe blogs regarding this:

http://madowney.com/blog/2008/03/19/flash-on-the-iphone

http://www.flashdevices.net/2008/03/adobe-flash-player-coming-to-iphone.html

[derX @ Mar 20th 2008 12:08AM]

If Engadget didn't toy with your heart, specifically, then it would toy with another person's heart.

I, for one, am willing to be so selfless as to allow your heart to be toyed with (and whatever else that entails) in place of mine or anyone else's.

----

Suck it up, besides, suffering for other peope is a popular way to become famous. See, Isaac, you're a star!

[Steveorevo @ Mar 20th 2008 12:25AM]

OK... I'm here to clear up some myths.

Myth: Flash sucks, I'd rather use...

Fact: Flash is the first interactive vector graphics format that combines a lightweight, and powerful just in time compiled engine/virtual machine. Can you name another? svg -no vm, ...?
Vector graphics can be small, scalable and deliver a big bang for the buck. What's not to like?

Myth: Flash sucks battery life.

Fact: This is all up to the implementation. The bottom line is anything consuming floating point processing power will eat CPU ticks, and the thus, battery. Typically, a mobile implementation would need to go idle at some point and sleep vs. redrawing all those vectors. By nature it is no more a battery eater then playing video back on the iPhone.

Myth: Steve reportedly thinks it's crud.

Fact: Steve is actually an envious bitter queen. Remember, Steve Jobs owned 17% of Adobe when Adobe first started out and thinks they owe him a great amount of gratitude. In actuality, Adobe owes Steve no more then Adobe owes Xerox Parc for researching desktop publishing technology and Apple's theft of the GUI. In 'Triumpth of the Nerds', Steve is quoted as saying 'great artist steal' and that they stole alot from Xerox Parc for their GUI, later on to say how much he hated M$ for stealing the GUI from Apple (the same GUI elements that Apple stole from Xerox Parc -who has yet to see a dime). Its one thing to change or revise one's thoughts, but in the same breath? Steve's a hypocrite!

Just as Steve is bitter over his being fired from Apple because of the Macintosh failure (READ: Macintosh was a success AFTER Jobs left –desktop publishing was then a boom and Apple’s killer app), Steve continues his personal rampage against Adobe because Adobe abandoned a lot of Mac technology as the PowerPC was outpaced by Window/Intels. Bottom line, Adobe products rock on Windows and some are just not available for Apple (Adobe Encore, Adobe OnLocation). Also because such products work exclusively with the generation of High Definition content, like creating BlueRay disc, something else you cannot do with Apple.

Overall, Jobs wants to dominate High Definition content via downloading through iTunes and ‘get back’ at Adobe, and Flash is in his way.

[CB17 @ Mar 20th 2008 12:39AM]

@Steveorevo

While I'm not going to debate the value, or in my opinion lack thereof (way too overused, see: Flash Ads), of flash.

The problem is that there's NO way to get the full version of Flash on the iPhone and Flash lite is just WAYYY to gimped. Sorry, it's true.

[carlo2 @ Mar 20th 2008 2:35AM]

@Steveorevo

Did you call him a "bitter queen"? YOU DID!!!!

[Mymaclife @ Mar 20th 2008 3:38AM]

@ Steveoreve - Anyone who is ignorant of history will find your final comments 'enlightening' For FACT read 'opinion'.

How wrong of Jobs, the CEO of a commercial organisation, to want to make money!?!!?

[clak @ Mar 20th 2008 4:22AM]

@Steveoreo

Looks like we got a lying Microsoft fanboy here. That crap about Steve Jobs stealing from PARC is the biggest myth in computer history.

Apple actually licensed the GUI from PARC by giving Xerox Apple stock in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product. Xerox did not believe in the technology because the Xerox Star (which was actually released in 1981) had originally failed in the market. The Xerox Star sold poorly because it was priced out of the market, selling for $16,000 or up to $100,000 for a file and print server.

And Steve wasn't fired because the Macintosh failed. First of all, the Macintosh failed because John Sculley raised the price to 2,500, a move that Steve protested against (The Lisa had failed because of its high price and Steve didn't want to repeat that mistake). That was merely the beginning of the problems between Steve and Scully. Ultimately Steve was fired because of a power struggle with the board of directors. He was fired because he wanted to replace Sculley as CEO. The board lined up behind Sculley instead.

And oh yeah, Flash still sucks.

[Rich @ Mar 20th 2008 6:03AM]

"The problem is that there's NO way to get the full version of Flash on the iPhone and Flash lite is just WAYYY to gimped."

Flash Lite 3 is just Flash 8 with a different name. It's not 'to gimped'.

[ssuk @ Mar 20th 2008 6:04AM]

Other than Steveorevo's last paragraphs being more opinion than fact, although there are still quite a few facts in there. If you didn't like his tone and ignored him for this reason, that's your choice and maybe your fandom lies else where.

But he is right, Flash content could easily run on a 333Mhz ARM processor which the iPhone has, content just needs to be optimised to do so. You have a Flash site with 1001 vectors flying around with glow, blur and god knows what else filters on, you're just slamming your head against a wall if you expect it to work on slow computers/mobile devices.
With the right use of screen size, making filter-heavy content solid PNG images instead of letting the CPU calculate the filters on the fly, use frame by frame or motion tweens instead of ActionScript for animations, you can very easily cut down the CPU consumption and make attractive sites to run on low CPU power. If iPhone Flash DOES ever come to existence, I don't think we should expect every website ever made in Flash to work right away and, much like there are HTML/CSS websites out there optimised for the iPhone, Flash sites will have to optimise themselves as well.

But we may just be jumping the gun and Apple may welcome Flash incorporation into the Safari browser, we've hardly given this time to find out.

[Cunthor @ Mar 20th 2008 8:24AM]

Hang on. So iphone can't do flash yet?? What is the point of a media rich phone with a large screen if it can't do flash? I'm sorry for sounding ignorant, but had no idea about this 'till now.

[Benson @ May 11th 2008 5:10PM]

Flash (real, not lite) runs handily on the Nokia N800 and N810; they have a 400 MHz ARM CPU vs. iPhone's 416 MHz ARM.

Flash is doable on this class of device; but of course, content that was designed by backing off until it didn't bog down a 3GHz desktop is gonna be a lovely slideshow. (And it's well known as a battery hog, because many flash apps don't stop cranking out frames when nothing's moving.) Maybe Apple doesn't want it, because, with a lot of the flash content that's available, it would make the iPhone look slow; dissing it may make Steve Jobs look slow to a few people, but that's much better for business than making your product look bad.

[peacebyanymeans (AKA: Moorio) @ Mar 19th 2008 10:43PM]

Jobs: We can't have FLash on iPhone

Me: Aww...

Adobe: Actually, we'll be putting it on the iPhone!

Me: Yay!

Adobe: Oh wait. No. We were wrong. We weren't truthful. We lied. We lied to you and dashed all your hopes and dreams.

Me: Awww...

Adobe: Also, you're adopted.

Me: What?

[Isaac @ Mar 19th 2008 10:46PM]

Congratulations. You have won the internet. It will be mailed to you shortly.

[Aguiluz @ Mar 19th 2008 11:10PM]

Aww... If I can rate you Highestest Ranked... I'll give it a +1 anyway. :)

[Reader @ Mar 19th 2008 11:24PM]

Dude Ted Stevens says that could take til Friday.

[DWells55 @ Mar 20th 2008 2:08AM]

It's comments like those that make this site so much fun to read.

[Matt @ Mar 19th 2008 10:45PM]

I don't get it -- if Adobe is willing to work with Apple to develop a version of Flash that would work on the iPhone, why wouldn't Apple want to help? It seems like it would be advantageous to both sides.

[Ellianth @ Mar 19th 2008 11:02PM]

Maybe they think flash competes with Quicktime. Way back when, i used to be able to save my flash work as Quicktime files, and most (all?) of the interactivity still worked.

This is just a wild guess though.

[willie nelson @ Mar 19th 2008 11:05PM]

because so far, flash on macs has proven to be incredibly insecure. you probably missed it (they didn't make a big deal about it), but quicktime dropped support for flash in 7.3.1. running the latest of everything on the latest hardware, i get about one flash-related crash a day in safari....

[JJ @ Mar 19th 2008 11:08PM]

It's harder than it looks because flash works on the background and that would mean creating or rewriting a whole new code for safaris security as iPhones are gonna be a target for virus if websites are able to directly communicate with the device through flash. I dont know. I could be wrong but that was one thing I thought of when I was expecting flash to be on the iPhone when it was released but later found out it wasnt. It's be nice to be able to see flash contents on the iPhone as I think it would complete the whole awesome web experience on a phone thing.

[Hawkman @ Mar 19th 2008 11:53PM]

I posted something similar yesterday, so apologies to anyone who gets deja vu - but as far as I can see there are several reasons why Apple wouldn't like this:

1. It's slow.
2. Steve reportedly thinks it's crud (I paraphrase).
3. Adobe are trying to push it as a ubiquitous mobile platform, which puts it in competition with Cocoa Touch.
4. As noted, it's a security risk, if exposed to the network.
5. It makes the iPhone reliant on a third party. Apple doesn't like relationships like that - the Webkit team, for instance, are heavily involved in the creation of open standards which compete with Flash (eg. WHATWG).
6. As a browser plugin, how would it work anyway? Thinking of the zooming functionality in Safari. Scaling Flash animations would kill my desktop, let alone a mobile phone.

Lots to lose, what to gain? Well... Flash ads?...

[John @ Mar 19th 2008 10:46PM]

So... Apple is hell bent against adding functionality to the iPhone. Oooold news.

[ethana2 @ Mar 20th 2008 1:14AM]

Android + Gnash FTW!

...is there a WINE mobile?

[Student Driver @ Mar 20th 2008 3:46PM]

Whine mobile? Yes, look for the Geo Metro packed with Apple fanboys in the parking lot...

[clak @ Mar 19th 2008 10:49PM]

The first one that says something about Microsoft is getting a beat down.

[James @ Mar 19th 2008 11:05PM]

my windows mobile phone has flash...oh no please dont ill take it back just put down the bat mr. jobs...my leg it hurts so bad.

[Reader @ Mar 19th 2008 11:26PM]

Uhm, clak, are you getting a beat down then??

[clak @ Mar 20th 2008 12:12AM]

Keep talking smack, pretty boys. I've already written down your names. The phone book is open as I speak. I'm avoiding those delicious morning sausage McMuffins, just to be fit enough to rumble. Now all I need to do is find a trainer and someone to hold my asthma inhaler and my walker and find my bifocals and then it's on, sweet meat, it's on!

[DWells55 @ Mar 20th 2008 2:11AM]

"and then it's on, sweet meat, it's on!"
-----
I'd be worried if I were you guys - based on the phrases "sweet meat" and "pretty boys," it sounds like he has a different idea of what a "beat down" is than the rest of us do.

[Nicholas @ Mar 19th 2008 10:50PM]

Yes, Flash just crashed Safari again today. I’m looking forward to my phone waiting for content to load and locking. Thanks, but no thanks.

And, Flash Lite, the shear joy of less is less. I tend to agree with the standards compliant route, after initially wishing that Flash would be available on the phone of i.

[Dave @ Mar 19th 2008 11:42PM]

How do you tell if it is Flash that's crashing Safari, and not other factors? Mac OS has been crashing on me whether I have Flash or not.

[Kai Cherry @ Mar 20th 2008 1:00PM]

LIES.

MobileSafari is the most unstable app on the iPhone...without question.

BTW, writing a MobileSafari plugin is trivial....I wrote one MONTHS AGO without documentation to allow downloading direct from MobileSafari.

[Michael Rondinelli @ Mar 20th 2008 1:18PM]

Crash reports show a backtrace at the time of the crash. These reports are logged in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Safari*.crash.

On my machine I have 39 such crash reports over the last four months. 34 of those crashes show the crash originated in the ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin.

[Saint @ Mar 19th 2008 10:52PM]

I think El Jobso has to be very happy with this... Adobe offering a Flash development exclusively for the iPhone... and that's a thing that Apple should have do in the first place!

So, Apple wins a free Flash development, Adobe wins a new platform and we will have flash on our iPhone/iPod Touch :)

Everybody happy, right?

[kev @ Mar 19th 2008 10:53PM]

Maybe if engadget users were actually in the industry, then maybe they would have something intelligent to say? Does anyone find it a little ridiculous that you need Leopard in order to develop for this? I don't think a bunch of independents or even big companies are going to rush out to buy a shitton of Macs just so that they can push software on a single device.

[clak @ Mar 19th 2008 11:19PM]

Are you nuts? Have you priced a Mac Mini lately? Wil Shipley does all his coding for Delicious Library with exactly 2 of those things. Or are you one of those idiots that thinks that no one develops for the Mac?

That would explain why Apple doesn't have a developers conference every year (if they did it might be called the WWDC) and why there were only four hundred and fifty exhibits at Mac World this year. /sarcasm

BTW, non-retards, there is a great interview from a few years back featuring Wil Shipley. I find it interesting to hear his predictions about Apple's conversion to Intel. Good stuff.

http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000581.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWDC

[kev @ Mar 19th 2008 11:30PM]

Yes, I'd like to pay too much for a wimpy POS to develop on, and be a generation behind in hardware. I think you're too high on your horse there buddy. There are tons of Mac developers sure--and then there thousands more Linux and Windows developers A: because of penetration and B: the lack of startup costs.

[clak @ Mar 19th 2008 10:54PM]

John Gruber called bull on this yesterday.

From Daring Fireball:

Adobe Smoking Same Dope as Sun ★
Ben Charny (yes, that guy) in The Wall Street Journal:

On Tuesday, when asked about the issue during a conference call with investors, [Adobe CEO Shantanu] Narayen said the company had since obtained the software developer tools Apple released last month. The tools will let Adobe build a Flash player for the iPhone, then distribute it through Apple’s iTunes online store, he said.

And without approval from Apple (including APIs beyond those in the current third-party SDK), they can distribute it in the same alternate universe as Sun’s supposedly-in-the-works Java port.

(The full Journal story is, alas, behind their pay wall. (Rupert Murdoch, where are you?) Best way I know to get a free version is to follow a link to it from Google News.)

[Kai Cherry @ Mar 20th 2008 1:08PM]

So basically, John is saying that there is no technical limitation on this (there isn't) but Apple's license.

Hmmm. :)

[cswallow01 @ Mar 19th 2008 10:55PM]

We'll I was wanting to ask, how the heck is Adobe going to get past the App Store problem? I mean everyone knows Adobe is a legitimate development firm which isn't going to hack FLASH onto the iPhone behind Apple's back... Thus someone's gonna haft to approve it for the App Store and it's Apple's yay or nay! If Apple's not gonna allow it, FLASH is a waste of time even developing for the platform. Cause without it added to the App Store, it's useless! So they better be willing to give Apple whatever they want! Cause I'm sure Apple would just like to stick with Quicktime and MPEG-4.

I would imagine FLASH working the same as MPEG-4 content works now with Quicktime on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.

You're in Safari and you have a FLASH video clip to watch, it presents a playback button. You touch it with your finger and it brings up a video player, hiding the browser entirely. I can't imagine FLASH videos playing back in a webpage! I mean maybe, but it would suck!

[Matt @ Mar 19th 2008 11:05PM]

You forgot that there are tons of other uses for flash than just video.

Many web pages use it for interactive content.

[Soonerpet @ Mar 19th 2008 11:01PM]

Flash would suck on the iphone, I don't know why everyone wants it so bad. The only good use flash has is for videos, but apple has given us a youtube app for that and h.264 encoded web vids. The only other use on legitimate sites are for flash ads and horrible banners. When you have a small screen like that, and a slow edge connection, to me not having flash is a godsend because I don't have to deal with ads or any other annoying crap on my precious screen. The day they add flash support is the day us iphone users lose our serene browsing experience.

[Das @ Mar 19th 2008 11:21PM]

I bet not having an internet connection would be a godsend too, no banner ads, no pop ups, no viruses guaranteed.

[Chris @ Mar 19th 2008 11:26PM]

I bet you would just hate a 3G iphone to, then all those flash ads would load so fast

[John @ Mar 19th 2008 11:56PM]

the PSP does fine with flash support.

[bob @ Mar 19th 2008 11:07PM]

this: http://sixrevisions.com/rapid-development/10_ajax_effects_website_fanciness/ sort of thing is the future of the internet, not slow to load proprietry systems like flash and silverlight, make the internet open again, im glad apple are for this.

[Das @ Mar 19th 2008 11:17PM]

People excusing the lack of flash support is pretty hilarious. If only they could apply such mental acrobatics to more useful applications.

While you can debate the merits of flash all day long, you can't really ignore the fact that other devices have it and the iPhone/touch don't. It's too bad too because flash is pretty snappy on my n810.

[clak @ Mar 19th 2008 11:26PM]

Apple will never allow Flash because Apple does not want to:

A) Pay Adobe for Flash.

B) Be bound to another company's proprietary software. Yes, they went with Exchange, but that's just so they can break into Enterprise and later implement their own alternative to Exchange, which is exactly why they allow Windows on Macs now. Get the peeps through the door and then show them something better. For example: I bought an iMac for my sister, a devoted Windows user and she hasn't used Windows partition once. She says OS X does everything she needs.

C) Use someone else software when they have their own proprietary media. Translation: Apple wants people to use Quicktime or standards like MPEG4/H.264. If the iPhone gains enough strength in the market, companies will start tailoring their web sites to suit iPhone users. We've already seen this happen with YouTube, Bank of America, Facebook, etc.

D) Kill the iPhone's battery life. This is the reason that Steve Jobs gives in interviews, but it's mostly just smoke screen. He could allow customers the option of disabling, but that would thwart his broader plans, as noted above.

[Jeremy @ Mar 20th 2008 12:01AM]

I have never been browsing on my phone and ever needed Flash. I guess that's pretty hilarious to you. Everything in life is pros and cons. The iPhone does some pretty unique things as far as web browsing goes that make the drawback of not having Flash seem irrelevant. Have fun browsing the latest web comic on your fancy phone and feeling smug about it. I'm going to go NOT be a giant toolbag and enjoy the product that matches up with what I use it for. Might wanna try that sometime.