Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Realtosh — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:41:19 -0000

Why should Apple pay Adobe to license Flashlight or Flash; and/or pay Microsdoft to license Silverlight. Instead of paying royalty fees to support proprietary technologies; why shouldn't Apple just continue to support H.264 codec which is part of the MPEG-4 standard.

Wouldn't supporting open standards be better for the web, for mobile computing and for Apple and its' customers, then giving money to either Adobe or Microsoft that has the ironic side-effect of helping to establish a proprietary technology as a defacto standard. If Apple were to try to establish a proprietary technology, it would be their own. But from Apple's recent history, they've made every attempt to build their solutions on standard technologies. Why would anyone think they would act differently when it came to Flash. They convinced the largest repository of videos on the web, youtube, to move from Flash to H.264. What would make anyone think that they would ever get around to supporting Flash, other than to keep it as a negotiating tactic with Adobe. Why give up that chip earlier than absolutely necessary.

Apple did in fact choose to support the ActiveSync protocol on the iPhone which is part of the Microsoft Exchange email technologies. Apple added this technology only out of necessity; to be compatible with Exchange servers already deployed at thousands of corporations. But in that fight Blackberry is already running away with the lion's share of mobile email, because their system works most of the time; several long high-impact well-publicized outages not withstanding. Apple doesn't want to be associated with the Blackberry outages that take out all Blackberry devices, even iPhones if Apple were so inclined to support RIM technology. On the other hand if a companies Exchange servers go down, all email is down including desktops. The IT folks and Microsoft will take all the heat.

Plus, I can see Apple building out an email server solution, more robust than the open source solutions that are already included for free with OS X Server.

But as far as Flash or Silverlight is concerned, I wouldn't be holding my breath if I were either Adobe or Microsoft. Apple is already supporting an open standard (H.264) and getting everyone who would listen to move away from licensed proprietary technologies (Flash and Silverlight) and the obligatory royalties. I can only see that as a good thing. Now all these websites who want to show up on the iPhone will have to provide their content in H.264.

Stop whining! It's cheaper to encode in H.264 anyway.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

drunken_economist — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:57:40 -0000

Some more thoughts: All my typos aside [this is some really good booze, inbibe and type], Stevo is just following the telco paradigm for mobile devices. ATT has their own 'store' for ringtones etc as does T-Mobile and others. WHY is this a big surprise.

The hacker / jailbreaker community not only has an installer.app paradigm for apps, they also have a Debian like package manager RUNNING NOW. Google Cydia as well as 'jailbreak' or 'installer.app'.

What it boils down to is, Steve wants Flash quarantined to an 'App', preferably signed, and NOT in MobileSafari's web space.. a space devoted to web pages, VERY lean Javascript / AJAX [see Google and Facebook's iphone pages, etc], and RSS.

Outside that space of Mail and Web, the kids and flying baloney afficionados get the appSpace like 'game apps'.. hence the show of Spore as a segregated app. Now whether Adobe will play by these rules [they can with AIR] .. well, that's the question.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

drunken_economist — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:42:39 -0000

Apple has always played hardball with Adobe over a number of things, basically to keep the core user experience [and support headaches] away from the vendors, this is why:

- Preview App supports basic PDF functionality.
- Ditto Quicktime and basic Flash.
- Ditto TextEdit and *.doc / *.rtf.

These apps run wicked quick on either PPC or Intel desktops.

Now we have a handset based on the [for a desktop, clunky, but for a handset okay] PPC ARM architecture.

If any of you have a jailbroken iphone or touch you know that the apps for RTF, PDF, and **basic** Flash video *cough* Youtube.app *cough* are acceptable.

But no way is Jobs going to allow Fuh-lash, a plugin that has had a checked past on the Mac OSX platform and that has even Intel users gnashing their teeth from time to time on his **new platform** with his **new userbase** of 2.5mil and rising iPhone users. Not with the current sucky telco infrastructure [in the US].

Sun is a whole other kettle of fish. They will develop a RUNTIME that allows APPs that Apple will SIGN.

Adobe wants a backdoor into *Mobile*Safari and Apple's web experience. For the mobile end user, they want to be 'the internet'.. And Stevo is saying uh, NO, I'm going after enterprise, and for the flying baloney you have the SDK. This should be painfully obvious.

MobileSafari in firmware 1.x has set expectations. There is no copy/paste [which annoys me], no downloading, and no Youtube or other plugin handoff [*unless* you use javascript/URL transmogrification for Youtube].

But we can already see how Apple is embracing the Youtube/Google AJAX way of doing things, heck, check Apple's MobileSafari guidelines ["Don't use or bring up Flash"], and their addition of a Javascript error console inside Safari [Preferences > Safari > dot dot dot.

Actions speak louder than words. What, in their docs as well as Stevo's little diatribes are they doing? To what end? Draw your own conclusions.

Oh, another piece of yellow journalism from me:

Scooby stabs iPhone in the back:

Go to ipodtech's 'iphone.app' page:

Service Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later.
Reference #6.4cdcf180.1205151626.2bf7f7f5

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

TranceMist — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:24:26 -0000

It's all BS.

I mean, now Sun says they'll develop a JRE for the iPhone.

So Adobe can't develop a reasonable flash engine?

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

just a reader — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 04:27:46 -0000

according to apple announcement, apple just wants to treat all applications which developed with iPhone on their Store and play the application easy and securely for iPhone users. their (new) business model cannot work well when the flash player ran well on iPhone. it is likely game console business model. although Store for iPhone is trial run, he has already noticed the key is distribution. he would just adjust the direction if the model failed after a year, then, it is enough to the Flash support on iPhone.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

mdriftmeyer — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:53:15 -0000

Long rumored SVG support? Download WebKit. It's an intricate part.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Mister Snitch! — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:44:14 -0000

So, on the say-so of an anonymous source, you broadcast the rumor that Jobs is lying. All right. May the same happen to you.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

jamiegau — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:00:57 -0000

And I expect Steve will eventually give them flash as Steve has built up Apple with a "For the people" type philosophy. I expect it masks the corporate nature of Steve and Apple, but it has been extremely successful.
But yes, the people want flash, I want flash. It is an amazing tool. I can knock up control interfaces in minutes. AJAX takes 10x as long. I am not dising AJAX, its great for many things, but Flash is generally better overall from my experience. (Its just harder to learn, and generally I find web developers are set in there ways and don't like learning new tech)

I must admit, Steve DOES have one point. Flash can EAT all your CPU, but this is usually because the developer writing the Flash app is a CRAP developer. (Common as they are usually designers by trade). Flash is very efficient. Much more then AJAX. It is the bad coding that is the issue. And I can see Jobs having issue here. But then again, you can code a javascript page bad as well..

James

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:21:52 -0000

Steve Jobs is a clever but ignorant man. If people want Flash, which they clearly do then give them Flash. Thats it.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Joeflash — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:08:54 -0000

Let's not turn speculation on whether the iPhone will run flash into yet
another *yawn* flash-bashing session. I am sooo bored of uninformed
Flash bashing that does not stand up to a grain of truth.

As for Flash running slow on Macs versus PCs, it's a problem that occurs
mostly in Flash player 8 and below, as a difference in the frame
rendering engine. Any Flash developer worth their salt will know that if
you set the frame rate of the FLA to 21, 31, or 41, that "bug" will
disappear, and mac SWFs will run just as fast as their PC counterparts.
Don't blame the technology, blame the developer for being too clueless
to know how to code a decent Flash app. And apps designed for the VM2
(AS3) runtime in the Flash player run at the same speed on the PC as it
does the mac. So let's put that one to rest already.

As for Jobs not willing to put Flash on the iPhone, as a Flash/Flex
developer I can see that as a perfectly reasonable assertion. One reason
I won't currently touch Flash mobile development with a ten foot pole is
that the Flash Lite player is a pathetically chopped down version of the
Flash player which requires a mix of AS1 and AS2 coding techniques with
a "hackiness" that almost makes Lingo programming look robust. I love
AIR, it's the best thing since sliced bread for an RIA developer such as
myself; but for mobile, I'm waiting until they improve the technology a
bit. I want my FLV (cue dire straits song :)... in Flash Player 9
thank-you-very-much.

A more plausible reason for there being no Flash on the iPhone is that
there is currently no version of the Flash player that would integrate
well enough with the iPhone hardware: Flash Lite 2 is too clunky and
primitive for such a sophisticated device, and the current Flash Player
9 may be too resource intensive, as its garbage collection routines
could stand some improvement. Given the roadmap discussions on Flex 4 I
attended at a recent Flex converence, and the up and coming modular
nature of the next version of the Flex framework and some of the
improvements to the next Flash player, in all plausibility Apple is
simply waiting for Adobe to license a "fuller" version of the Flash
Player 9 or 10 for use on the iPhone.

I am sure there are a fair bit of politics involved, but in all
likelihood (attention: pure speculation ahead) Adobe and Apple may be in
talks to establish quicktime player capability in the next version of
the Flash Player, as the FLV standard is currently kicking Apple's
Quicktime off the net as the current de-facto standard for online video,
and it' unlikely Apple wants to invite that wolf into their home without
some serious adjustments. And given the iTunes licensing model, it's
quite possible they'll want some form of DRM for video and audio in
Flash as well.

Everyone assumes there's this incredibly aggressive war going on between
Apple and Adobe. What if there is no such thing going on, and Apple and
Adobe are merely taking their time to sort out the mutual licensing
rights? Quicktime, PDF, iTunes, DRM, FLV, SWF, Flash Player, iPhone OS
-- all these are proprietary technologies, on both sides, and getting
them to legally play well together will take time for the suits to work out.

So please, let's leave the limp "Apple is doing an f-you to Adobe"
rumours on Slashdot and MySpace where they belong.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Ken Carpenter in Orlando — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:25:33 -0000

Why doesn't Apple just buy Adobe . . . and Yahoo, too, while they're at it?

What can they be saving that $18-billion-cash war chest for anyway?

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Dan — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:18:57 -0000

Strange that i-mode internet phones in Japan have supported Flash for several year snow..

doesn’t make sense that something that works fine for developers and users in Japan, on the worlds most successful mobile internet platform, can’t work on an iphone which probably has a more sophisticated operation system.

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/...

i always wondered where apple got their “i” in ipod and iphone.. i think i-mode :)

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

John — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:39:43 -0000

It's funny to read some of these uninformed blog posting comments.

PDF support in Mac OS X and on the iPhone is using technology that Apple developed internally and independently of Adobe. (PDF is a published standard). The reason why PDF created by Mac OS X natively is PDF 1.4 is because Apple doesn't have a huge incentive to keep up with the PDF spec - people can just complain to Adobe :-). The latest spec should be PDF 1.7, when Acrobat 8.0 came out.

The reason why Preview runs so fast is because it just rasterizes the PDF page - displays the image. For better or worse, Preview owns the "MIME" type for rendering PDF. Most people do not need a lot of the advanced features that a PDF created by Adobe Acrobat (like filling in forms) or other Adobe applications. But Adobe Reader does support all the features - that is one reason why the Reader for both Mac and Windows is so fat. And Adobe, at least for the Windows Adobe Reader, has been working on improving the launch of Adobe Reader. If you launch Adobe Reader 7.0 or 8.0 - it will launch faster than previous versions.

No graphics professional is going to export PDF from Mac OS X PDF engine and send it to printer. They will export using InDesign, Photoshop, etc... where the PDF output will be to the latest spec and support the print options and info the print professionals are looking for (i.e. color separation, etc..)

Adobe nor Macromedia has ever charged for the desktop Flash Player for Windows, Mac or Linux for end users.
Adobe does license the desktop Flash Player to corporations if they need something customized or need to distribute it as part of their application.
Adobe does charge to license Flash Lite - the "mobile version" of Flash.

And there is a reason for this - because it takes a lot of work to develop and port Flash Lite to a wide and diverse number of platforms, and that work should be compensated as long as Adobe can derive licensing fees. But that day is probably coming to an end sooner rather than later, because I highly doubt Microsoft is licensing Silverlight as expensively as Adobe is for Flash Lite - in fact, it would not surprise me if Microsoft was giving Silverlight free to Nokia or even paying Nokia to include Flash Lite (unless there is something anti-competitive about that...)

As for the Flash Player 7 SDK - well, the reason why that hasn't been updated is due to Adobe's focus on the mobile handset and the lack of interest and ROI case to update that SDK as far as I can tell.

As for all the complaints about Adobe releasing Mac software late, especially for Creative Suites to be Mac OS X native, Leopard, etc.. native - Anyone who has developed software understand the complexities of multiple releases and bug fixes - it is a nightmare. Both Apple and Adobe have their own agendas, yet are still interdependent on each other for part of their success. Apple's OS releases don't fit perfectly with Adobe's releases - and also, neither of their development schedules also align with Microsoft's. Think about it - Adobe is one of the few remaining large ISV's that is cross platform for most of their applications for both Windows and Macintosh.

I'd say that in the early days, Apple and Adobe needed each other - and had a symbiotic relationship. The Mac would not have survived without the LaserWriter and PostScript. When Jobs licensed PostScript, he also bought 25% of Adobe. I think Adobe would have been fine without Apple because PostScript was really the only game in town for a great printing engine, and Adobe literally printed $ with PostScript (an old-timer Adobe friend of mine said that in the good old days, Adobe had the highest revenue/employee in the U.S.). All the major laser printing companies licensed PostScript from Adobe in the early days.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Jobs visited Adobe to reassure Adobe management that he was going to fix Apple and wanted to reassure that Adobe was committed to the Mac platform.

After John Warnock retired from Adobe as CEO (he is still co-chairman), and Bruce Chizen took over, I think, for one reason or another, Adobe and Apple started drifting apart. Chizen was more Wall Street oriented.

I really don't think Steve Jobs has that much respect for Chizen. I met an ex-Adobe person at a MacWorld Expo about 2 years ago, and she told me the story about her first day at Apple, being in an elevator with Jobs. Jobs saw that she was a new employee at Apple and carrying stuff with her to bring to her desk, and he asked where she worked previously. When she said Adobe, Jobs went nuts and asked, "What the hell is Bruce trying to do at Adobe - make it into Microsoft!"

I wonder what Jobs thinks of Shantanu Narayen. At least Narayen has an engineering background, something that Jobs would respect a whole lot more than Chizen, who I think Jobs has always thought of as a "sales" guy.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

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Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

istara — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:17:12 -0000

My G4 titanium powerbook, 800mhz, still worked brilliant fast and had the latest operating system (at that time, Tiger) until I finally replaced it with a MBP.

The tibook could handle anything: loads of apps open, loads of tabs, games, high res videos, whatever.

Except Flash. It really, really struggled with flash on webpages. Not just intense flash structured sites, but web pages with flash ads on them. It would go slow, performance was hideously degraded, flash animations would stutter and stagger and be slow.

There was nothing wrong with it, it just found Flash a struggle. Now I am not technical enough to know how an 800mhz G4 compares with the iPhone's processor. But I can see why there could be problems with certain implementations of Flash on the iPhone.

That said I would rather take an optional, limited or poor implementation than no Flash at all.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Evil Carbon — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:08:39 -0000

That Steve Jobs, he's a tricky little fellow!!

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Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

dennis — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:03:52 -0000

Makes perfect sense.

Apple probably was getting back at Adobe with OSX with the native ability to write to a .pdf file from print mode completely eliminating the need for the overpriced Adobe writer ap.

But then again Adobe got were it was from Apple with postcript...

Adobe wants to play with the big boys, but they just don't have that much in the quiver to give Apple and MS Google a run for the money. Lot's of free Adobe type aps out there that work just as well...

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

chris — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:21:24 -0000

Just a thought, but do you consider the difficulties involved in re-creating the ui required by flash in a touch environment to be trivial enough that it's not part of the reason we don't see flash on the iPhone? No mouse to mouse-over with; no drag&drop; how to handle both the screen resolution and zooming of moving interactive flash pages?what about all those wonderful UI elements invented by the flash app developers? It all sounds wonderfully hit & miss whether a page would work or not. Exactly the experience. Most iPhone users are looking for....isn't it?

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

veggiedude — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:03:10 -0000

PDF is already built-into the iPod Touch and iPhone. There is no need for another license agreement with Adobe (Apple licensed it for OS X years ago). This talk is nonsense.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Troll Central — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:53:00 -0000

Anyone want some fresh crow? How shall I cook for you? The first batch comes off the grill in 10 minutes. If you need a towel to wipe off the egg on your face, we have some Microsoft towels to pass out.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

stelt — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:42:46 -0000

Apple has hired some SVG experts over the last few years. Webkit is growing great wrt SVG support, not only for on-line apps. Maybe it matters?

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Ray — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:33:52 -0000

Flash would open up a whole new development platform on the iPhone that Apple wouldn't be able to control. It would offer developers cross platform support for their apps as well as a steaming video player that would give users more options to put video on their phone outside of buying it from Apple. This goes completely against Apple's non-open business model.

I'm not doubting that there are a lot of performance concerns, both in processing and bandwidth. I'm sure that a web site running a bunch of embedded flash files would probably run pretty bad on the iPhone, but considering what I've seen run on this phone, I'm sure it's not something that the geniuses at Apple couldn't figure out. I really feel this is more about Apple wanting total control of the iPhone platform than it is a technical issue. The same is true for Java.

Or maybe Apple is coming out with their own competitor to Flash that runs on the iPhone too. Imagine being able to use core animation, coverflow, ect. on your web site?

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

Victor Panlilio — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:22:04 -0000

On your mobile or other portable Internet handheld device, go to www.prada.com and let us know if the Flash playback is acceptable.

Re: Is Steve Jobs lying about Flash not working on iPhone?

jake — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:19:25 -0000

One: Who gives a shit whether or not Flash runs on the goddamned iPhone. Seriously. Who cares? It's just another "thing" like bluetooth headsets voice dialing or user-replaceable battery that look great on paper but you would never use.

Two: People, buy devices as they exist today. It's fine to want to see them improve, but seriously, if you need shitty Flash Lite then get something else.

Three: If you think desktop Flash is coming to the iPhone or any phone, then I would submit to you that you have basically no understanding of web technologies, modern desktop computers, or mobile devices. So STFU.

Four: Robert, you basically called Jobs a liar in the title of your post. You are super classy.