
Adobe official confirms Flash for the iPhone, says Apple will decide when - mariorz
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/09/30/adobe-official-confirms-flash-for-the-iphone-says-apple-will-decide-when/
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cpr
There is no news here. All it says is that they've ported it to the iPhone
hardware (not just the simulator, as they announced in June). And Apple has
promised them nothing.

This prompted me to write an email to Steve Jobs (sjobs@apple.com--he
apparently actually reads all his email) as a nearly 20-year Mac (and now
iPhone) ISV, begging him to stand firm and refuse to allow any kind of Flash
technology on the phone.

Flash flies in the face of all open Internet standards, and is a huge resource
hog. Flash is Adobe's ploy to build an alternative OS that makes Windows and
Mac OS irrelevant. Why should Apple give Adobe any ground on which to stand?

Also see <http://counternotions.com/2008/06/17/flash-iphone/> .

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whacked_new
Obviously, Flash on iPhone is in Adobe's interests, and against Apple's
interests.

But in terms of consumer interests, is it such a bad thing? There are three
posts in favor of Flash on the iPhone here and as of this posting, they have
all been downmodded to -1. Assuming they are legit opinions, I don't
understand the Flash hate.

In the face of standards, fine. But knowing that the consumer doesn't care
about standards, the ability for a Flash application to appear consistent
across platforms, which is plain drudgery in HTML now (and given IE6's
prevalence, will last for a good while, like it or not), I can see downsides,
but it doesn't look overwhelmingly bad.

Or, would you explain the principle argument against it, aside of the
standards bit?

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mpk
> Or, would you explain the principle argument against it, aside of the
> standards bit?

Flash is a proprietary runtime. That means Adobe has to support whatever
platform you're running at the moment.

Flash support for linux has only recently become somewhat decent. And that's
IA32 - if you're running a 64-bit OS on your 64-bit processor, you have to use
the IA32 compatibility libraries to run flash. If, for whatever reason, you
decide to go with NetBSD/SPARC64 - you don't have flash.

You do, of course, have all the open web technologies because you simply
recompile them for your platform.

Flash is proprietary and tying yourself to that runtime will restrict not only
your choices, but also the direction the web takes.

The exact same holds true for Silverlight.

I left out standards and their long-term development, because you specifically
requested it, but that's also a major factor.

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briansmith
What is the alternative? AFAICT, Flash has no real competition.

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cpr
With modern browsers supporting decent (now getting very fast) JS, HTML5,
CSS3/4, Canvas and SVG, you can write pretty much anything.

The appearance of Objective-J and Cappucino opens up new possibilities, too.
(Wouldn't have thought it efficient enough, but the 280 folks have proven that
wrong. And that's with current-generation JS implementations; more modern JS
VM's are getting 10X and more over current.)

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abstractbill
_With modern browsers supporting decent (now getting very fast) JS, HTML5,
CSS3/4, Canvas and SVG, you can write pretty much anything._

How would you implement justin.tv, using these technologies?

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emmett
All you really need is an RTMP client for Safari so that it can play flash
video and all the complaints would be moot.

Hm...that's a pretty good idea, actually. I wonder how hard it would be.

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thehigherlife
i'm curious as to how they would implement this, especially considering it
isn't like you can just write a plug-in for mobile safari.

any one got any ideas?

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natrius
That is why they need Apple's blessing. They can still get the player itself
working as a standalone app so when Apple says it's okay, they can integrate
it with Mobile Safari and roll it out.

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scumola
Ok, <http://mediawombat.com> (Flash Search Engine) is officially developing an
iPhone Flash Search app now.

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callmeed
This is great ... since one of my main businesses is providing Flash-based
sites, this is welcome news (if it performs well).

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noor420
This is good news from Adobe.

