Flash Mobile 14 Jan 2007 12:57 pm
Does Apple’s iPhone support Flash?
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. 
on 14 Jan 2007 at 3:13 pm 1.Ryan Stewart said …
Bravo Mike, best information I’ve seen about Flash on the iPhone yet.
on 14 Jan 2007 at 5:26 pm 2.rd said …
I can’t remember where I read it (somewhere on gizmodo I think) that someone from Apple admitted that iPhone was running an OSX like operating system, not full blown OSX.
But yeah, I’m hoping they give us Flash or the ability to add our own widgets. I think he’s a little ballsy saying Java is dead, but I think most mobile developers do wish they didn’t have to code in it.
on 14 Jan 2007 at 6:50 pm 3.Mario Klingemann said …
Have you read this interview with Steve Jobs: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/technology/11cnd-apple.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
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“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”
[…]
“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.”
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Notice the “software to buy” part? To me this sounds like they are planning to make this a cash machine where free “uncontrolled” apps and games provided by Flash developers would only jeopardize their profits. So I’m rather sceptical that they will let the Flash player in voluntarily - but maybe some pressure from the community might help.
[md] Hi. I would personally bet that Apple’s intent to keep the iPhone “closed” is to preserve a high standard in user experience and maintain a good reputation for the iPhone. As Jobs pointed out, this doesn’t mean that they won’t sell 3rd-party apps. It just means that they’ll have to test and approve the apps before they can be installed. For a device like this, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. At the same time, for someone like me to use the iPhone, it will have to offer software that allows for enterprise mail server connectivity - particularly calendaring. Adobe uses GoodLink from Motorola’s recently acquired Good Technologies in order to get push email from our Exchange servers. This is the most important software on my phone. Without this functionality the phone would be far less valuable to me. This doesn’t mean that Apple will have to support GoodLink, but I’d like to see them do something that allows for direct, secure access to MS Exchange - including full calendar functionality. [/md]
on 14 Jan 2007 at 10:05 pm 4.Phillip Kerman said …
For sure, having some sort of certification is always important. Take what I believe I understand the deal is with Brew apps: you get the certified before you even try to make a deal for distribution on the phone (talk about overkill). (So much for the huge demand for developers.) Anyway, in such a closed system it comes down to what tools work best for the device at hand. If Apple can make some framework in which you build apps that doesn’t involve Flash it sounds fine to me (still going on this closed system concept).
Ultimately, I don’t see where the community has a ton of influence. #1 priority for Apple: get people to fork over $500-$600… #2 make that marked grow… #3 good supplemental content?
This whole discussion (not just yours MD) has hooked me but it comes down to so much speculation and little else. I mean, we can all make educated guesses but we’ll just have to wait to see what turns out.
on 14 Jan 2007 at 11:34 pm 5.david doull said …
any thoughts on if they would support Apollo - maybe not at first but evenutally.
It would provide enough of a sandbox to prevent unfriendly software getting on the phone -although nothing stops ‘ugly’ software getting on there
[md] Hi, David. Anything’s possible. Mobile and device support is on our roadmap for Apollo. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that we chose the WebKit engine for Apollo as it had already been ported to mobile devices by Nokia and is very small. Of course, we assume that the Safari browser in the iPhone is based on WebKit just like the desktop version of Safari - so that’s one step in the right direction. We shall see. [/md]
on 15 Jan 2007 at 12:35 am 6.Savvas Malamas said …
I love Apple and Steve Jobs-Woz(and Jonathan Ive)..
I can’t live without my macs and i can’t breath if i don’t boot the OS X every morning..
But..Have you seen the apple’s site?
There are a lot of stuff that it would be MUCH better in flash(yes the iPhone presentation too!!) but no..Apple wants the QT.
I think the only way for Apple to embed the Flashy baby into this sexy device is the FCommunity.
So SCREAM!
[md] Hi. Actually, if you look carefully, you’ll find Flash on Apple’s site. Go check out the new Apple TV section. If you click through the feature tours you’ll find Flash content. [/md]
on 15 Jan 2007 at 2:01 am 7.Savvas Malamas said …
Maybe this is the only section of the site that i don’t visit often(oh..and the iPod too).Of course there is some flash content and i have seen Flash content in the past but all i’m saying is that apple loves to use the QT..Of course, that’s their product.
But i think apple(+cingular) has to understand what a flash/flex app can do for an almost perfect device like the iPhone and embed the FP for this..Not for animation and effects..I love the iPhone OS effects that i saw in the presentation, there is no need for flash in this..(Sorry for my bad english)
on 15 Jan 2007 at 10:30 am 8.Robert M. Hall said …
Hey Mike,
Thanks for the extra info. I found the same article by Pogue late Saturday night and made an update to my original post on thoughts about iPhone and Flash here: http://www.impossibilities.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=232
For what its worth, its been the most active post in regards to comments that I have put up in some time, 15 comments and counting so far. People are really interested in seeing Flash on this device for a lot of reasons.
on 21 Jan 2007 at 4:54 pm 9.Marc said …
This is going to be a really big deal for the iPhone. I wonder if they are still feeling sore that Flash Video is overshadowing Quicktime these days. In this blog post (below), I discuss two big reasons why iPhone better have a good Flash plugin, one way or another.
http://www.iphonenote.com/view/show/2
on 28 Jan 2007 at 12:39 pm 10.Rich said …
It doesn’t seem that Flash video is better than WT, WMV, or even Real. Sure it’s encoding but Adobe doesn’t make it easy finding that only 2 products does hi-qual 2-pass encoding, something not Flash itself or any Adobe encoder can do.
It also doesn’t help that Adobe (Green and Fegette article) says things like “When it comes to video, experience shows us the QuickTime format creates far superior results to the WMV and AVI formats.”
That’s just NOT true, and this is from someone who prefers QT.
on 04 Jun 2007 at 10:22 am 11.Simon said …
IPHONE WILL SUPPORT FLASH!
Check my blog for links for best proof yet
http://pladeo.wordpress.com
on 15 Sep 2007 at 3:51 pm 12.Tommy said …
http://iphone-support.blogspot.com : iPhone Support, Support iPhone, iphone tools, iPhone Accessories, iPhone tips, apple iPhone, apple iphone mobile phone, iphone mobile, iphone news
on 29 Nov 2007 at 8:46 am 13.Aron said …
on 18 Mar 2008 at 7:16 pm 14.Aron said …
on 01 May 2008 at 7:19 am 15.BT Smith said …
q
on 19 Jul 2008 at 6:18 am 16.iphone games music said …
Nice blog, i have added it to my favourites, greetings
on 31 Aug 2008 at 7:20 am 17.fornetti said …
I do not believe this