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Mossberg: Apple working on Adobe Flash support for iPhone

appleinsider.com — An impending software update to Apple's iPhone will include a plug-in for the handset's Safari web browser that will finally enable users view Adobe Flash media files, the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg reports.

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  • jtp51, on 10/11/2007, -11/+29A talented developer could really make one heck of a user interface using Flash running on iPhone's touch screen.
    • djphatjive, on 10/11/2007, -9/+4I thought it was already the web on your phone not a shrunk down version????? No flash????? My PPC has flash.
    • rcran, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Wouldn't it be cool to get methods for up to 5 mouse points? Like _mouse1 and mouse_2 ect. Of Course, that would require Adobe to add some stuff to Flash just for Apple, but it would still rock.
  • Andy.D, on 10/11/2007, -8/+3http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20070705/questions-about-apples-iphone/

    The actual article: http://digg.com/apple/Flash_Plug_in_For_iPhone_Coming_Soon_2
  • Drexus, on 10/11/2007, -18/+1I can't wait... Does this means flash will drive the iPhone?
    • DaffyDuck, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15No. The interface will remain Cocoa with Core Image (and Core Animation) which is superior to Flash. The are just enabling flash in the browser.
      • Drexus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Superior how? I give it marks for smooth quality animation, but that's not what flash is about is it? Are you going to write tools and games with CORE? Are you going to program universal interface apps with CORE? Think before you spastically puke out your comments.
  • bradym80, on 10/11/2007, -17/+5My 1.67ghz G4 cant handle flash. If a processor with half the clock speed can handle this, I will not be happy.
    • Drexus, on 10/11/2007, -4/+18What? I developed a lot of my best stuff on a 733Mhz G4. Why can't you get it to run on a 1.67Ghz G4?
    • zephc, on 10/11/2007, -4/+12My old 450Mhz G4 Cube could run flash just fine too. Either you're lying, or you need to stop running 20 concurrent copies of Folding@Home on your machine...
    • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2The 266MHz Freescale MX21 in the Chumby (http://www.chumby.com ) drives Flash just fine, and AFAIK it's the slowest machine around doing so. There's some reasonable deficits in performance (callbacks especially are slow as hell), but that's pretty much expected on a device that slow.

      My thoughts are that Apple's just drumming up a FlashLite plugin for Safari/ARM and going from there. It contains most of the feature-set of Flash, and it runs faster on ARM/Embedded devices, so it makes complete sense (but making that binding might be a pain in the neck; I haven't worked with WebKit's plugin interface so I just wouldn't know).
  • sickswaystop, on 10/11/2007, -7/+37Flash + iPhone = can't touch this na na na na
  • LegendarySock, on 10/11/2007, -22/+8What the ***** is an iPhone?
  • fyre2012, on 10/11/2007, -2/+72"will finally enable users"
    Finally? It's only been out a week!
    • bwad, on 10/11/2007, -5/+8Yet it feels like forever...
    • Dhalgren, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7It's Finally for Mossberg. I mean he's had the thing for like 3 months now...
  • totorototoro, on 10/11/2007, -2/+28Great that Apple is addressing certain perceived needs.

    To be honest, I haven't missed Flash that much...but the only sites I visit that use it for content are cnnsi.com (for sports scores), and Youtube (which isn't really an issue). The majority of flash stuff tends to be ad-based. Of course, like any other web feature, once it comes, you just forget its there :p
    • LeonardNimrod, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7And Google is moving all Google Video and YouTube away from Flash. Google is much bigger advocate of removing Flash in lieu of AJAX than Apple is.

      I thinkthe likelyhood of Flash on the iPhone is pretty slim.
    • Dhalgren, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1The only place I see flash being used a lot (besides embedded video) is movie web sites. Maybe this will finally get them to stop making web pages that need a "loading" page...
  • jake8689, on 10/11/2007, -8/+3once this happens i'll buy one
    and whay wasent this right out the gate
    • mrsteveman1, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2the letter A is nowhere near H or Y
      and there is no E in the contraction Wasn't
  • nicku, on 10/11/2007, -25/+2The iPhone will already play YouTube videos which are Flash Video, so I guess it's somewhat there already.
    • NSResponder, on 10/11/2007, -1/+15Nope, YouTube is re-encoding in H.264 for TV and iPhone.

      -jcr
    • Chakat, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3youtube is reencoding the videos so they can play on the iPhone; it's not playing them as flash
    • tbenathan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Wow, you're hilariously out-of touch. Those YouTube videos are encoded H.264, which is higher quality and scalable. Flash will be a welcome addition to my iPhone.
  • Nysul, on 10/11/2007, -1/+15What version of flash? The pocket pc version is 7, which is pretty useless.
    • aelix, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0It will probably be 7 since that is the last version to have an SDK with source code that you can license.
    • LeonardNimrod, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2That is the problem. The only useful version of Flash is too much of a resource hog, especially on a mobile device with a finite battery life. Flash 7 will not currently work for OS X on the ARM platform. And Apple and Google wnat to see Flash go away in favour of AJAX.
      • synotic, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3This (and your other) comment makes no sense. AJAX has nothing to do with streaming video.
        • LeonardNimrod, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Flash isn't only used for streaming video. Just check the converted YouTube videos taht use the more effiecient H,264 with HTMlL and AJAX. A dedicated H.264 decoder is faster and uses less power than a flash based one. So, for video there will be H.264 ALONG WITH AJAX!!!!

          For non-video Google and Apple are pushing AJAX instead of Flash. Get it?
  • NSResponder, on 10/11/2007, -9/+3I hope he's mistaken.

    -jcr
  • crunchaweezy, on 10/11/2007, -5/+0Great,,,
  • kingygk, on 10/11/2007, -5/+3I hope they make the iphone stream quicktime and windows media files on the qweb!
  • LowRentDiggs, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8Finally, after a whole week!

    Doh, someday I'll learn to read all preceding comments...
  • immtiaz, on 10/11/2007, -8/+0so how does youtube already work on the iphone if it doesn't have flash pre-installed?
    • longhorn49, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7h.264 encoding
    • Me1000, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Yes Youtube works, there is an app dedicated to it.
      it plays H.264 videos...
    • Me1000, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3diggs new comment system sucks! it takes too long for comments to appear!
      people cant see other replies, and you get what just happened, 2 comments that are pretty much the same thing!
    • immtiaz, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1you guys are smart
  • jbus, on 10/11/2007, -7/+30The iPhone is fine without flash... I was actually hoping that the lack of flash on millions of iPhones would drive many companies to rethink their Flash only content strategies and encourage the use of standards rather than proprietary razzle dazzle. Hopefully this story is false.
    • HerrEisenheim, on 10/11/2007, -4/+4I agree. One thing strange about this article is it says that Apple is working on Flash on the iPhone. Apple doesn't have jack ***** to do with Flash. It's entirely up to Adobe as to how and when Flash comes to the iPhone, and then it's going to be up to On2 whether or not we see Flash 8 VP6 compatible video playback.
      • rcran, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1No it doesn't. Adobe had nothing to do with flash in Safari. Adobe creates software to create flash media, and decode it. But apple is in charge of Safari, which supports the flash decoding software.
        • HerrEisenheim, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Wrong. Flash is a plug-in FOR Safari provided BY Adobe. Adobe decides what platforms Flash is ported to. There exists NO OSS (or otherwise) Flash compatible API other than the Adobe licensed one.
        • Me1000, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Apple is only involved by allowing Adobe to use the plugin.
      • drzeus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Apple and Adobe must work together to bring Flash to the iPhone. Seeing as third-party apps can't be installed by the user, Adobe can build the plugin, but Apple must install it. Moreover, considering Apple is being all closed about the iPhone, they're going to need to do some of the development work (or at least some good communication about specs and capabilities) to bring Flash Player to this new platform.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5The only thing I care about personally is if they enable Flash, giving me a way to disable it ala FlashBlock. Flash these days has come to be synonymous with ads and web-games/mini-movies, and to be honest, I don't care for either.
      • Firehed, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1You can bet it'll be possible. The iPhone already has an option to disable javascript (and a couple other things... cookies and something else; too lazy to walk six feet and check). And likewise, I'd probably disable it. There are only two sites I frequent that rely on Flash. Pandora isn't especially necessary on an iPod, and I don't see handdrawngames.com's Desktop Tower Defense game playing too well with a touch interface (unless Adobe works their magic and changes how hovering and clicking works as compared to HTML content)
    • Skeuomorph, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Sick of crappy Flash encoding. Look how much better YouTube looks on the iPhone versus the real web site, thanks to the H.264 encoding. Movies in H.264 look fantastic as well, maybe letting us get rid of that WMV hack, DiVX, too. (Yeah, yeah, I know it's its own IP now...)

      Here I was hoping the iPhone would mark a resurgence of QuickTime encapsulating H.264 encoding, delivered (as per Apple's dev notes) over http using byte ranges.

      We can dream...
  • jordan.basham, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2So I guess this isn't from Mossberg as in the shotgun...
  • roflcawpter, on 10/11/2007, -17/+3To bad the iPhone will still be overpriced and under featured. I'll save my $600 for hookers and liquor, kthxbai.

    A fancy GUI and a lack of features compared to the Nokia N50? And for a few hundred bucks less? lol
  • gamer31, on 10/11/2007, -12/+3what's an iphone?
    • DaffyDuck, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Dang, I guess not everyone knows about this great device yet. I'm gonna go digg up some stories to get the word out!
  • Aleks, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8First site i'm going to once I get the Flash update for the iPhone is this: http://neverendingarnold.ytmnd.com/
  • ilgaz, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2If it happens, iPhone users/fans should thank US, yes the people they dugg down to -20 levels because they talked about Flash support.
    • dime, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Yes, because Apple obviously was trolling Digg for people with -20 levels to find out what the iPhone needed and in no way could have realized that having flash should be on their to do list on their own...
    • ilgaz, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1they were relying on fanatic idiots who get impressed by Apple logo but in reality it turned out they have some basic requirements for paying real World money too.
      I don't give a f to digg -20 btw, forgot to tell..

  • Pilot85, on 10/11/2007, -11/+2iDontCare
  • bblades, on 10/11/2007, -8/+2Safari on the iPhone is crippled without Flash. There is so many great flash based apps on the internet, and I imagine they would look great on the iPhone. After trying one yesterday I must say its the real deal, particularly Safari, but Flash would definitely improve the experience
    • jschrab, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2"There is so many great flash based apps on the internet"

      I think you mean *games*. Desktop Tower Defense in your hand could be a serious time sink. I can't wait!
      • DaffyDuck, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Flash games would be great. The question is how to control them since they are, for the most part, designed for mouse control.
  • MavRevMatt, on 10/11/2007, -8/+3iPhone = instant frontpage

    Instant frontpage = fanboyism at work
  • film42, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1No surprise..
  • gfair, on 10/11/2007, -3/+0Apple is likely skipping Flash and going directly for AIR, formerly Apollo, the runtime engine and Flash replacement and likely expands the capabilities of Flash significantly.
    • Skeuomorph, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1That would be horrible. Let's stick to "web 2.0" (XHTML/CSS3, DHTML+JavaScript, and XML HTTP Request Object) for a little while instead of jumping onto proprietary bandwagons in too big a hurry.
    • drzeus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Unlikely. The AIR team at Adobe has enough on their hands finishing AIR for Windows and the standard version of OSX, and Linux is next on the list.

      By the way, Skeuomorph, you do realize that AIR applications can be made with XHTML/CSS, DHTML+JavaScript, and XML HTTP Request Object, don't you? Sure, there's some proprietary stuff in there too (like a specialized Flash Player) and special windowing and file system APIs, but it's still standard web development goodness built on WebKit.
  • GetTheGirl, on 10/11/2007, -4/+1first site I'm going to when Flash support is enabled
    http://seeqpod.com
  • gschueler, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2flash support is a key move.

    one word: games
  • GetTheGirl, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1two more words: music players
  • mechanisma22, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1I hope they keep releasing updates like this regularly to get our $600's worth..
    • Tweekster, on 10/11/2007, -2/+0it should have shipped feature complete.
    • superkendall, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1That's what Apple does. They ship, and add features... the 1st gen iPhone I had had a number of pretty handy features added over the years. And with an almost totally virtual interface, there should be very few features they cannot bring to the current iPhones even after they release new versions.
  • Tweekster, on 10/11/2007, -6/+0It doesnt have flash? is that a joke?

    Flash isnt a necessity but give me a break, it should be on there when it shipped
    • ColdDimSum, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4How many of YOUR mobile phone devices include Flash?
  • mrminty, on 10/11/2007, -5/+1My PSP has flash support...
    Why should we care?
  • jpop, on 10/11/2007, -4/+1Am I the only one who's first thought was "What the heck is a shotgun manufacturer working with Apple for?"
  • Gee1004, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Cool. The iPhone will now be able to view stickam cams
  • maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2How about flash support for 64 bit browsers. Seems that should be a little bit higher on adobe's priority list.
  • rr525356, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I hope it is a port of the Flash 9 player rather than flash lite. AVM2 is the only way most flash content will run decently on that 667 mhz processor.
  • kevincw01, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2FINALLY! JEEBUS IT'S BEEN A WHOLE 6 DAYS...CANT YOU PORT A COMPLEX COMPILER TO A NON-STANDARD PLATFORM IN 6 DAYS!
    • diggumjonez, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1isn't it just a checkbox in xcode?
  • electroWildWood, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1this is only news if we get the current flash player 9. the level of efficiency from player 8/ as2 to player 9/ as3 is significant. we can make some killer little iphone apps with player 9/as3. if its flash lite, it will be terrible and horrible news.
  • electroWildWood, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0also i think 667 mhz is plenty. i remember flash playing on my 233 mhz pc without issues. i think its more about the flash player and the efficiency there.....granted more mhz would be nice, but if the file has a low file size the performance possibilities are there......
  • Diganta, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I recently bought a Macbook Pro 15" (2.4GHz Santa Rosa) with 4GB of RAM and the other day the CPU was doing 110% and running hot. I looked at the processes to see track down the culprit. It was Safari, one of the tabs I had left open the day before was Gizmodo. The Gizmodo webpage about the iPhone was running two concurrent flash video banners about a competing Blackberry Pearl phone.

    Once I killed the Gizmodo website my CPU returned to normal and the laptop cooled off. This recent trend I've noticed on my older Powerbook G4 (1GHz) with 1GB RAM was fine browsing, till the advent of flash video banners. Then my web browsing experience and computer performance went south.

    I have nothing against Flash content as long as they give the user control over the web browsing experience back. On the iPhone this is even more critical, given that its not running an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz.

    1. Confirm download of Flash video (FLV) content.
    2. Ask the user if they want the Flash video to be played again. Looping Flash videos kill performance.
    • drzeus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Badly-developed Flash content kills performance. The problem is that too many designers are coding, not that there's an inherent problem with Flash Player.
  • Trynemjoel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1How will it be with ads on websites now? Does Safari support a good ad-block app?
    • Skeuomorph, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Camino has great ad blocking but Safari (even version 3) doesn't. However, in Safari preferences you can apply a user CSS style sheet, and CSS styles can be used to suppress block shaped ads, so you can find a number of style sheets that help block ads in Safari. Previously, Safari 2.0 supported a couple add on products with blocking, but these don't compare to Firefox's AdBlock / AdBlock+ or Camino's built-in ad blocking.

      http://www.google.com/search?q=safari+block+ads+css
  • LeeSoong, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1It would be Better for Apple to work on Locking Down the iPhone Root Shell Hacks and Xploits.
    • ilgaz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Well there is a verified way to achieve such thing and it worked great so far on OS X/Linux/FreeBSD: Build on open source, share the source (not trade secrets as Cocoa) with developers.
      On "Device OS X", they forgot (!) to do such thing and you know? It will cost them a lot.

  • KungFuJesus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1prepare to see Edge brought to it's knees
  • websterphreaky, on 10/21/2007, -2/+1Apple Stock DOWN $29.10 in three weeks since the announcement by AT&T that Apple LIED about total sales in first 2 days - 128,000, NOT 500,000! The iPhone like the Apple TV is a FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .....
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