Comments on: Flash Coming to iPhone, Maybe… If Apple Says Okay

By: ZenPsycho

ZenPsycho — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:40:06 +0000

Hi it’s me- breton from above. You seem to have missed my point. Apple doesn’t need to make a plugin. Any features they want in the browser, they will just add to safari itself, not to a plugin.

By: David

David — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:12:32 +0000

I agree with the statement above from Breton. Apple does not want to make Flash for the IPhone. It makes no sense. The current wave of development being designed for IPhone’s is in Objective C and C++. This maximizes the efficiency of the applications. I can see Apple moving towards a proprietary version of a “Flash” like plug-in that is more compatible with the existing hardware on the IPhone. The 2D API on the IPhone is considerably more extensive then Flash and when harnessed properly it will out perform flash in every aspect. My vote is to keep Flash off the IPhone and start building applications that maximize the hardware on board.

By: Breton

Breton — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:45:15 +0000

Maybe apple have a competing techology they are working on? Can’t figure any other reason for allowing their devices to look silly when they spit a ‘missing plugin’ icon where a Flash app should be.

Of course they have a competing technology! it’s called safari, and they’ve been loading it full of all the features that typically differentiate a “flash-based” site from standard html. We’ve now got css animations, transformations, masks, gradients, 9-slice buttons and borders, hardware accelleration, Canvas, both as an img tag and as CSS backgrounds, font embedding, really nice font rendering, super fast javascript with squirrelfish extreme, which now jits javascript to native code. audio tag, video tag, svg. The only thing that flash can do that safari can’t (natively), id flash 10’s 3D apis, but it’s only a matter of time. Flash 10 doesn’t have any penetration yet, so apple has plenty of time to catch up with that one last feature.

Wait a second you say, there’s no authoring environment? Oh? then what’s dashcode then? Truth is, technologically speaking, the iphone doesn’t need flash to do interesting things like IE6 does. And I have a feeling that apple is going to favor its own hard work on all these technologies over Adobe’s. It’s just about getting mindshare at this point, and the iPhone is the key to that, so honestly, why would they let flash onto the iPhone? It duplicates functionality that already exists in the native app, and we know how apple feels about that.

By: Adam Cleaver

Adam Cleaver — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:52:42 +0000

This is great news for anyone wanting to deliver brand experiences on mobile phones – it’s just a shame we still don’t know when it will happen. The powerful combination of the iPhone interface with the rich interactivity of Flash is something agencies, marketers and consumers will find hard to resist. Interestingly, we can also envisage a potential cost saving for clients as pre-existing Flash content is repurposed for mobile.

At present, it looks like there is only talk about the Flash plug-in on the Safari web browser. As such, Flash widgets per se are not really on the cards yet. Native iPhone widgets/applications in Flash are still a good while away, but we wait with anticipation for the opportunity to use this new technology.

http://www.collectivelondon.com

By: AlexW

AlexW — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:47:13 +0000

Maybe apple have a competing techology they are working on? Can’t figure any other reason for allowing their devices to look silly when they spit a ‘missing plugin’ icon where a Flash app should be.

By: aj[fp]

aj[fp] — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:16:17 +0000

Very, very, very good news!!!

By: ferrari_chris

ferrari_chris — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:37:29 +0000

This sounds like great news!

I know of a company that has been holding off on any iPhone development due to a lack of Flash, but if it does come along that will open up a whole new pathway.

And, free iPhones for ‘testing’ purposes. :)