Thread: iPhone can't support Adobe Flash!!

youtube video are flv videos, maybe you favourite flashs can be convertered from swf files to flv videos.

Ya this video stuff is just a conversion issue, some sites will care more about Iphone users and some will take longer but they will all come around with-in a year or 2 and U will have a True mobile Net thanks to Apple

Apple has been successful in all its products, whether its MAC or the ipod. So I think the iphone was overhyped. Anyway if they fix the bugs it should really rule the market.

You can play YouTube vids on the iPhone because Apple has convinced Google to start encoding video in H.264 which the iPhone and AppleTV support at the hardware level (much faster performance vs. FLV software decode).
Apple is pushing full on Web 2.0 development which doesn't include Flash since it isn't a standard (proprietary Adobe). If you look at the changes to the Apple website that were made in the last few weeks they have removed all Flash and are doing everything you see with Web 2.0 techniques. Web 2.0 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Google is also one of the largest proponents of Web 2.0 so they also have a vested interest in not being chained to Adobe and Flash.

Also, Adobe is trying to be a competitor in the mobile space with Flash Lite which is being used by Symbian and a few others. Difference being Flash Lite is kind of slow and also is really just a UI layer and nothing else.

And one of the largest reasons Apple probably chose not to support flash (this is my own guess and not hard fact), if you've ever looked at your CPU meter(s) when you have a page that is running flash, very often you start seeing some serious activity that is pretty constant. On a mobile device this kills battery very quickly which is one of the main things Apple is protective of with the iPhone. (And another reason that H.264 encoding is better since the hardware does it much much more efficiently)

I have an iPhone, and I was initially a little dissapointed in this too, but I'm also a developer (Java, AJAX and Flash) and when I thought about it for a few minutes and considered really what the iPhone's purpose is, to be a communications device, this makes perfect sense and is a smart move by Apple.

This is not saying that a plug-in won't appear (but there is currently no Flash decoder written for the Arm processor that iPhone uses). But for iPhone, especially in it's 1.0 form, Apple is smart to keep things protected and simple.

I also work in the telecom space (developing services for operators and NEPs) and I ask you, for any phone you've had, how often did you update it? (Software-wise/Firmware). I'm willing to bet almost never unless you had a problem with the phone and they had to flash it. (Operators never tell you that new firmware is available, and phones largely up to now have not been user-upgradeable). Now, Apple has a good track record in this department with providing feature upgrades, and with the iPhone's main capabilities coming from it's software and the mechanism being iTunes controlled by the user, this could be a huge thing for us as consumers.

For the couple of sites I run I see some things (Flash included) that don't work right on the iPhone, but that just lets me know I have some work to do because there is a segment of viewers that can't use my content. (It's also why I never did full Flash on any of my personal sites because even though Flash is almost ubiquitous, it's not 100%, not everyone has the latest version, and not everyone has a speedy computer and net link.) So, if you want to reach the audience, you have to be accessible. Flash can be pretty, but it can also get in the way of this where Web 2.0 (AJAX in particular) runs on modern (even slightly old) browsers with no needs for plug-ins.

Sorry for the long post, but thought I'd share.

Cheers!
-Mobi

They will most definately be working to adding the things it does not have in the future including flash. I bet they are well on their way to making them right now as we speak it's just that they have to sell all this original iphones first. Obviously as with all technology they come out with better ones later.

Here's an article that updates the flash situation.

-a