Comments on: iPhone Redux

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:48:04 +0000

The Iphone can’t handle the full version of Flash, Okay. Flash Lite 3 is not the full web experience??? Gee, my iphone as it stands is??? A little bit of irony there isn’t it Mr. Jobs???
I’ll bet if FL3 supported h.264 he’d be all over it.

By: thinman

thinman — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:26:40 +0000

What’s the big deal with a form, most of you crazy coders know how to use the tab key, and if a mouse-pusher like me can cruise through the form and activation process in less than 40 seconds, then quit yer whining. Support Ryan and fill the damn form!

By: David V

David V — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:47:23 +0000

I don’t really understand what the hell is going on here. Flash Player Lite or what ever arcane naming convention you guys are stuck with must play mp4. Those files play just fine on the iPhone and through AdobroMedia Flash Player 9 etc.

Jobs is factually correct- FP9, having to do hardware acceleration rendering for mp4 files, will kill and device with limited hardware- mobile. Flash Lite is just a silly sub set that, from what I read in the statement on ZDnet, only has two adopters.

Just make one work right for gods sake. And while you’re at it RTSP for FMS. I mean, if you want to win. If you would like to continue to only be marginally successful as the standard people choose because “it’s barely good enough”, by all means, continue what you’re doing now.

By: Dion Almaer

Dion Almaer — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:55:59 +0000

Steve Jobs may put Flash on the iPhone if he sets up a system where he personally white lists every SWF for “performance, quality, and reliability”.

ps. I also went to leave a comment there until the registration step

By: Doug McCune

Doug McCune — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:36:39 +0000

I was going to leave a comment on the ZDNet post, but then realized I had to register and my ADD kicked in, so I’ll comment here instead.

I think Jobs’ quote about Flash Lite is appropriate. Jobs said: “a mobile version called Flash Lite ‘is not capable of being used with the Web’”. When the iPhone came out it touted having the “real” Internet, not some text-rendered butchered Blackberry-type of Internet. And I think everyone would agree that Safari on the iPhone is way way better than what you get on most mobile devices. If Apple wants to stay true to the goal of delivering the real internet then they can’t just add Flash Lite on there. Flash Lite is not the real Internet (ie the Internet that people are used to accessing on their laptops). For that you need the real Flash Player.

So if Flash Player 9 simply can’t run acceptably on the iPhone then he’s got a point. They either need faster hardware or Flash Player needs to take less power (isn’t this what the Tamarin Tracing project is about?). Yeah, they could add Flash Lite, but that’s so far from being Flash on the iPhone that I can understand why they would balk at that. Do it right or don’t do it at all. What would happen if they added Flash Lite? There would be a big announcement, and then all the normal iPhone users (by normal I mean non Flash geeks) would try to browse to web pages that have Flash content and it still wouldn’t work.