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iPhone: Flash Fiction?
One of the biggest gripes about the iPhone since its first introduction way back in 2007 was the lack of support for Flash.
Since then, rumours have surfaced off and on that Adobe was working with Apple on a version of Flash for the iPhone. The most recent of which came to a head on Monday when Adobe's CEO told Bloomberg that, "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."
Some took this as a signal that an iPhone port of Flash is in the pipeline. Others, such as long-time pundits John Gruber and Joe Wilcox were a bit more skeptical.
I have to say I'm with the latter. It's no great secret that Apple doesn't like handing control over iPhone content to just anyone. And it's even less of a secret that the company doesn't want anything running on the iPhone that could take cash out of Apple's pocket.
Adding Flash support will do both of these things: not only will it open up a new avenue for unauthorised software and another possible attack vector, but it will allow users to get to such media sites as Hulu which threaten to take money away from the iTunes store.
My guess is we won't see Flash on the iPhone until after Java comes to the iPhone. Java is, after all, a more commonly used component than Flash, and Apple has long developed its own virtual machine for OS X, meaning that the company has a lot more say over development.
Perhaps that will be the next big news at WWDC: Java and/or Flash on the iPhone.
"Java is, after all, a more commonly used component than Flash" ... Really!? Perhaps this was true before YouTube popularised Flash Video, but I really don't think that this is the case any more.
Posted by Derek | February 3, 2009 12:08 PM