I’ve been getting a LOT of emails from Flash users asking me if I can confirm whether Apple’s new drool-worthy iPhone will be able to run Flash content. The answer? I can neither confirm nor deny this. It’s their product and it wouldn’t be my place. You have to ask Apple.

I will say that I attended Jobs’ keynote at Macworld Expo last week and this sexy little device is really, really cool. If anyone could change the entire consumer electronics industry with a single product release (Remember that little iPod gadget? I recall a lot of people saying when they announced it, “my MP3 player does all of that already. This isn’t innovative…” Heh. Yeah, right…), it’s Apple. And this thing just might do that.

But the Flash developer community wants to know whether they will be able to deliver rich experiences to this pocket-sized wonder. What are others saying?

Macrumors reader c-Row reports that German magazine MacWelt interviewed one of Apple’s executives in Europe who allegedly confirmed support for Flash in the iPhone’s Safari browser.

New York Times columnist David Pogue has posted an FAQ where he addresses Flash support directly by quoting an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs:

“Will the browser offer Flash and Java?”
In my previous blog post, I said “No” (you’ll see why in a moment). But several of you have pointed out an interview published in the German magazine MacWelt, in which the browser IS said to offer Flash and Java.

So I’ve asked John Markoff, who audio-recorded our interview with Steve Jobs, to play back the relevant exchange for me. Here it is:

—
Markoff: “What about all those plugins that live within Safari now, like Flash or like Java or like JavaScript?”

Jobs: “Well, JavaScript’s built into the Phone. Sure.”

Markoff: “And what are you thinking about Flash and Java?”

Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”

Markoff: “Flash?”

Jobs: “Well, you might see that.”

Markoff: “What about YouTube –”

Jobs: “Yeah, YouTube – of course. But you don’t need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get ‘em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec.”

Sidenote: Hehe. You’ve gotta love a CEO who takes every opportunity to push their company’s products. I’m sure Apple would love to see companies like YouTube support Quicktime and h.264. Whether that would allow YouTube to “up their video resolution” is a dig at h.263, the first video codec supported by both Flash and Quicktime. It’s worth pointing out that I’ve seen many examples of video using Flash Player’s On2 VP6 codec looking better than h.264. As our engineers put it – it’s all about the encoding. If you have a good encoder and you really know what you’re doing, you can make huge improvements to the quality of your video. However, when encoding is server-based and fully automated, you’ll end up with less perfection. Back to the iPhone…

I can comment on whether some of the speculation about Flash Player running on the highly-anticipated iPhone makes sense to me or not.

First of all, Danny Patterson suggests that it may automatically support the full Flash Player 9 browser plugin because the iPhone’s technical specifications list that it runs “OS X”. However, Slashdot reports that Apple may be using “OS X” a bit liberally. Slashdot also claim the device runs a Samsung-provided ARM processor, which would basically mean that any application that can run on your OSX-based Mac won’t necessarily automatically run on your iPhone. Now, that doesn’t mean Flash Player wouldn’t run on the iPhone – it just means that it wouldn’t necessarily work automatically.

Personally, I’d love to see Flash supported on the iPhone. And I’m sure Apple will be able to comment on this over time. Their heads are probably spinning after such a huge announcement and a level of press coverage that I can’t recall ever witnessing for any consumer electronics product release. Plus, it looks like it will be very easy for them to update software on the iPhone via iTunes so I’m sure they’ll be releasing software and applications incrementally over time. So even if Apple didn’t ship with Flash Player initially (and again – I’m neither confirming nor denying here – it’s their product), that doesn’t mean they couldn’t add it post-ship very quickly and easily. I’m sure requests from the massive Flash developer community could help accelerate that. :)