Thoughts on the “Flash on the iPhone” News

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There are a ton of blog posts about the “news” that Flash on the iPhone is coming soon. I’ve been getting a lot of Twitters and emails about whether or not I can confirm or deny and I wasn’t going to post anything but I do want to give my thoughts as an Evangelist and since JD provided some insight, I want to as well.

I have no idea if the rumor is true or not. I’ve met Andru through some of his work with MindCamp here in Seattle and I know they broke the 1.1.3 Jailbreak story so he has some cred in the tech community. But the fact that this news has 1880 digs at the time of this writing shows that there is a TON of interest in Flash on the iPhone. I’m not sure anything with Flash has had that many diggs on Digg before, so it’s really cool.

But this isn’t Adobe’s device. 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.

[tags]Flash, iPhone, Rumors[/tags]

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  • http://www.bit-101.com Keith Peters

    But Apple wouldn’t be creating the Flash Player for iPhone, would they? Like anything else, wouldn’t Adobe create it and license it to them? I mean, yeah, it’s up to Apple to announce it, but I can’t believe that nobody in Adobe knows the truth. Not that they could say anything if they did, so it’s kind of a moot point. :)

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    Yeah, 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.

  • http://www.munkiihouse.com Tony Fendall

    I agree. There’s no way that Apple could build their own flash player independantly of Adobe. If they did, it would never be completly consistent, and that would be a disaster for all of us in the long term…

  • Bob

    On a side note, how do these mobile browsers work? Specifically the new Opera 9.5 and Skyfire browsers for mobile phones. They decode FL3 video, so, do they have to license technology from Adobe for this?

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    Re: Skyfire, I researched them recently, but the only thing I see in the public record is this, in their FAQ:

    “(Q) Seriously, how does Skyfire do all of this?
    “(A) The only way we can tell you this is if you join our team.”
    http://www.skyfire.com/product/faq

    I know Opera had a server transcoder in the past, but I haven’t heard of rendering SWF on the server and delivering graphics to the client… might be, I just haven’t happened to hear, myself.

    jd/adobe

  • http://mkeefedesign.com Matthew Keefe

    I would be one of the many Flash developers that would love to see the iPhone get Flash support, but I just don’t see it happening in secret, unless the higher people are involved, but like Keith said, it really is a moot point.

    That being said, I wonder if/when Flash comes to the iPhone if they will be able to use the multitouch abilities, that would be pretty cool.

  • Ola Muldal

    What is certain, *when* a popular phone supports Flash Player 9, it will set a new standard, and there is tons of AS developers ready to deploy to mobile phones. It should be in Adobe’s interest to get this out as soon as possible, to get a grip on this market. Flash Lite is just to tedious (atleast is was in the past, havent really had time to look at FL3, with AIR and all going on atm).

    If I could just use my existing AS3 skills for mobilephones, I would have built several apps and sites for mobiles already.

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  • http://ivangrob.com/ Inav Grobov

    Today has asked the friend about support by iphone of Flash. He has told that officially does not support (http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/12/its-official-no-flash-support-on-the-iphone-yet/) and its phone has broken in 2 months. He bought iphone in the USA, and itself has unblocked.
    Excuse for my English.

  • Jamie McDaniel

    Seems someone from the Wall Street Journal reads your blog, Ryan. I don’t have access to the whole article, but they listed your name in the preview.
    Adobe, Apple Hit Flash Point

  • Ron

    Pardon my french, but the Flash player on Mac OS X is a mess. It sucks huge performance and every time I play a video on Youtube the fans spin like crazy (on my Macbook Pro, non the less). And I don’t even dare play it in full screen.

    Watching a HD Quicktime video full screen is no problem, all the fans stay quiet.

    If Apple wanted Flash on the iPhone, they wouldn’t have bothered with Youtube re-encoding everything as H.264. They care about the performance of their little device and don’t want no Flash player messing it up.

    Further reasoning is here: http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/news_flash_no_flash