Existing users, 
Adobe clueless about Flash on iPhone, technical hurdles remain
Posted 13 February 2008 @ 12pm in News
If Apple is planning to enhance the iPhone with Flash playback capabilities, key Adobe employees that would be instrumental in the process are either being coy or have not been let in on the secret.
Mike Downey, product manager for Adobe AIR (and formerly for Flash) claims that there is nothing going on inside Adobe that he knows of, and it would be a surprise to him if Apple develops a player by themselves.
Ryan Stewart, Rich Internet Application Evangelist for Adobe, recently posted the following on his blog:
“I assume someone at the high levels of Adobe knows what the status is but I don’t and everyone I talk to doesn’t. That’s because only Apple really knows anything about it. If you want Flash on the iPhone I’d keep bugging Apple. I’m really stoked about what’s going to come with the iPhone SDK and believe me, I want Flash on it just as much if not more than most of you. But no one aside from Steve Jobs has any idea if/when it’s coming. […] everyone I talk to doesn’t know anything. And I have no idea how Apple would implement it but if anything is happening it’s happening at a really high level and that’s because it all rests with Cupertino.”
Hence, if Apple is indeed planning to introduce Flash support on the iPhone in the near future, the company is working on a clandestine project with select Adobe engineers, keeping product managers and evangelists in the dark. Or, more likely, Apple isn’t planning to introduce Flash support — or at least full Flash support — on the iPhone anytime soon.
Flash performance and usage is abysmal on current mobile devices that support playback. With regard to performance, mobile device processors — including the iPhone’s — simply aren’t fast enough to handle most Flash-laden sites. Flash Lite, the scaled down standard designed specifically for mobile devices, is even too much for most devices, and isn’t widely used.
Furthermore, Flash Lite is not a replacement for standard Flash in the sense of a full browsing experience. Thus far it’s been used primarily as a means for implementing custom interfaces on mobile devices or delivering proprietary content built specifically to perform well within the bounds of a mobile device’s performance/memory limitations. Since the iPhone does, in most ways, deliver the full strength Internet, watered down Flash might not mesh.
Jens Chr Brynildsen, a Flash expert who maintains a number resources for the standard including Flash Magazine, told us that the iPhone’s processor — a 600+ MHz ARM processor that actually runs at 412MHz — simply won’t pass muster.
“I really don’t think 600Mhz is going to cut it. I’m just testing out the Nokia E51. It has a 369Mhz processor and totally sucks performance-wise with Flash Lite. The extra 230Mhz won’t provide the required juice. […] I doubt they want to ruin a the user experience just to satisfy the need of a rather limited user base. Just imagine entering a website with five Flash banners.”
With regard to usage, most mobile devices (phones) that include Flash support are hampered by poor Web browsers that make navigating actual Flash content unwieldy. In fact, most of these devices have Flash support turned off by default due to usage complications and the significant drain on battery imposed by playback. The iPhone has a stellar browser by mobile standards, using an engine similar to the Desktop versions of Safari. But rendering Flash content could introduce stability and navigation problems.
Our guess? If Apple does implement Flash support on the iPhone, it will be extremely limited — perhaps only including the ability to playback embedded Flash videos encoded in the H.264 format within MobileSafari but aggressively restricting the types of content that will load (there’s already a bookmarklet dubbed iTransmogrify! that will launch embedded YouTube content in the iPhone’s native YouTube player). Interactivity and full support for sites displayed with Flash simply don’t make sense on the current iPhone generation.
Feedback? info@iphoneatlas.com.
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7 Comments
Posted by jbelkin
13 February 2008 @ 4pm
I think it’s highly unlikely that Flash will come to the iphone - a) too much bandwidth waste for ads and b) Apple hates adobe (and vice versa).
http://2aday.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/iphone-flash-rip/
Posted by Robb1068
13 February 2008 @ 4pm
Occasionally I do run into sites that have Flash or are entirely Flash based. It would be nice if there was the option to enable Flash at the site (like a tap button), rather than having it on full time.
Posted by jd33
13 February 2008 @ 4pm
There’s an iPhone bookmarklet called itransmogrify, which converts some flash videos to iphone format.
http://joemaller.com/2008/01/12/itransmogrify/
It seems to work pretty well for individual flash videos, but won’t convert flash apps (or banner ads, for that matter).
Posted by libertyforall1776
13 February 2008 @ 9pm
Seriously, who needs Flash?! Safari can do SVG which fits the bill if implemented on iPhone, along w/H.264 video and then you can see Flash is a proprietary dinosaur!!!
See:
http://webkit.org/projects/svg/index.html
Posted by Matthew Fabb
13 February 2008 @ 10pm
The full Flash 9 player ships with the Nokia N810. I have no idea what the performance is like, but the N810 chip is 400 MHz, so I imagine that technically the iPhone could run the full Flash player.
While the iPhone has been a huge success without Flash, it’s still seen as one of the weaknesses of the iPhone and any time a possible “iPhone killer” is brought up, things such as Flash support, video camera, replaceable battery and more are brought up. So Apple needs to decide whether it can continue on without Flash, or give one more competitive advantage to all the other companies trying to play catch up to the iPhone.
Posted by Just Browsing » Flash on the iPhone?… Probably Not
14 February 2008 @ 3am
[…] An excellent write-up on iPhone Atlas (the only worthwhile iPhone blog I’ve found) makes a strong case that technical issues really are the biggest barrier, despite reports to the contrary. The article […]
Posted by bryan54
15 February 2008 @ 11am
While I can’t conjecture about what is going on about putting flash on the iPhone, I would like to point out some things very misleading about this article. First, judging a processor’s speed based on it’s frequency (MHz) is like judging a car’s speed based on it’s color. Yes the faster cars may have a tendeny to be bright red, but any car can be red, and not all fast ones are red. Comparing those two processors based on MHz is not accurate, you need to use calculations per second. Also, it would not be fully necessary for Adobe to be involved in the process. Iphones use a stripped out version of Safari. Safari has flash player capability. This means that Apple purposefully stripped that out for the iPhone version. Putting it back in being a good or bad idea is still up for grabs, but Apple could do it without Adobe.