No Flash for the iPhone, yet
Steve Jobs boldly announced at MacWorld that we would not have a baby version of the Internet with the iPhone but the full and complete Internet as shown through Safari. This is not exactly true. Plugins, the ability to extend the Web Browser with OS specific enhancements, have been a part of the Web world since Netscape introduced the technology back with Netscape Navigator 2.0 (for those counting, that was 12 years ago). Plugin technology is NOT supported with the iPhone version of Safari. The most popular plugin, Adobe's Flash, can not be installed to view the millions of Flash movies, games and adverts on the Internent.
Apple is being mum on why they made this decision. This, of course, leads the rumor mill to go nuts. Some people claim that Apple wants to kill Flash and put in place a purer Internet - the support for this argument is that Flash is nowhere to be found on the Apple site.
This is a great idea, but I think the practical solution is more likely: the Flash Player has to be developed by Adobe and must work flawlessly on the iPhone for Jobs and Co to green light the extension. Remeber, the success of products such as the iMac, iPod and iPhone are their simple interface and reliability. Maybe, just maybe, Adobe were not ready with the Flash Player at launch day? What leads me to think this is that the iPhone does support Adobe's other big product - Acrobat. There is obviously some relationship between Apple and Adobe and I can't see why Apple would allow Acrobat on the iPhone but not Flash.
As for the Flash movies being removed from Apple.com - possibly Apple just wanted a clean site they new would work with the iPhone on launch day. Just a thought.
Posted at 05:49PM Jul 11, 2007 by Matthew David in Flash | Comments[0]
