6 ms·

Why Apple Won't Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone

15 points by iamelgringo 18y ago

dejb 18y ago
If this is truely their approach then the iPhone is going to start looking like a pretty lame platform within a few years. There will be too many cool and interesting new things out there that just don't work on it.
- olefoo 18y ago
  This is why Android is such a big deal. Yes Apple delivered some real innovation in UI, particularly multitouch. But by trying to enforce lock-in they are eroding the value of their offering.
  - Brushfire 18y ago
    Agreed. Everyone else commenting seems to be pointing out the technical hurdles / problems with a flash installation, but they are ignoring the huge business problem with NOT implementing it: customers want it. Eventually, phones are going to come along that allow free apps, your own music, flash, similar browsing experience, and a real keyboard... and smart people will start to switch back. In other words, the technical hurdles here are less important than the business ones. This is Jobs trying to have his iron grip, but in the long run, I dont see it working out.
    - yesimahuman 18y ago
      They might not sell apps/games...but that's better than not selling the phone in the first place!
  - bestes 18y ago
    I disagree. I think the massive innovation on the Internet is due to the fact that it's easy to see the code for everything (HTML, CSS, Javascript). Flash (and Silverlight, etc.) are all attempts to hijack the Internet as we know it. They do offer a better experience, but at a cost (freedom, more code, less innovation, licensing fees, patents, higher costs).
- allenbrunson 18y ago
  in reality, this is a much, MUCH bigger issue than whether some random plugin is or isn't allowed on the iphone. i personally don't like flash. i think adobe has done a poor job of managing it, and that they are a bad steward of what has become the de facto multimedia platform of the web. based on his actions, it's possible to assume that steven p. jobs feels the same way. flash is very entrenched on the desktop, but it has yet to gain much of a foothold in the mobile world. by making the iphone a great big hairy obstacle to adoption, jobs just might derail a mobile future that is similarly dominated by flash. personally, i hope he succeeds!
  - dejb 18y ago
    > in reality, this is a much, MUCH bigger issue than whether some random plugin is or isn't allowed on the iphone. That was my point. It is about whether you get to operate your phone the way you want. It is about the percentage of existing and future innovation you will be able to access. Without this the value of the platform will deteriorate. > i personally don't like flash. So you think you or Steve Jobs should get to decide if anyone else can use it. What sort of totalitarian utopia do you have in mind?
    - allenbrunson 18y ago
      Would you agree that jobs gets to decide how the iPhone works? Because that's what this comes down to. flash has always been a terrible experience on the mac. It sucks up ridiculous amounts of CPU, far worse than on Windows. Given the iPhones limited CPU, it would like be even worse there. By not giving in to adobe now, jobs is holding out for faster, better alternatives to emerge.
    - allenbrunson 18y ago
      Would you agree that jobs gets to decide how the iPhone works? Because that's what this comes down to. flash has always been a terrible experience on the mac. It sucks up ridiculous amounts of CPU, far worse than on Windows. Given the iPhones limited CPU, it would like be even worse there. By not giving in to adobe now, jobs is holding out for faster, better alternatives to emerge.
- axod 18y ago
  You consider flash cool and interesting??? Look at some of the awesome things going on with javascript+html5 - being able to do multitouch, canvas, video tag etc. That is the future, flash is likely to go the same way as Java applets IMHO Who wants java applets on their iphone browser? not me thanks.
  - dejb 18y ago
    > You consider flash cool and interesting??? Not particularly no. The point is that new technologies come along all the time and if you they are going to ban anything they don't like they are going to miss out on a substantial proportion of interesting software. > Who wants java applets on their iphone browser? not me thanks. Me. Why not? I'd also like to able to run whatever the F* I like. Why should you or anyone else tell me what I can or can't run?
    - axod 18y ago
      Jailbreak it then and install flash.
dbrush 18y ago
"Don't hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe's Flash software: Apple's terms-of-service agreement prohibits it." That is probably the most trivial issue preventing Flash from running on the iPhone. Companies negotiate and renegotiate agreements all the time.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  "Companies negotiate"... but does Jobs? What would Adobe have to put on the table to get Jobs to budge?
- scott_s 18y ago
  The point they're making is that it's not a technical problem, but it violates Apple's fundamental strategy with the iPhone.
- there 18y ago
  i agree. something as major as flash wouldn't be just another app in the app store, it's something that apple would bundle into the next firmware update and tout in their commercials. there is obviously some other reason for them not wanting it on the phone right now.
makecheck 18y ago
The iPhone has to be concerned about power consumption, and as a general rule unleashing interpreters is risky because it allows "unnecessary" amounts of computation to consume power. Consider Flash video. While it would be nice, is it the most power-efficient way to display video? Ditto for games, or anything else that Flash is used for. There is also the very real problem that Flash is abused for things that people don't want. Pointless intros, advertising, expensive animations...all consuming CPU in a way that is largely beyond the user's control. From the article: "websites that use Flash to render content or navigation won't work on the iPhone"...fine by me, I have never seen a site that did Flash navigation in a way that was more useful than default web navigation (instead, it was just...flashy).
- jcl 18y ago
  It is unlikely that power consumption has anything to do with the restriction. For one thing, you can write wasteful code just as easily in a compiled language as in an interpreted language, and I have never heard of Apple rejecting an application because it computes in a wasteful fashion. And interpreted languages can run nearly as efficiently as compiled ones for many user-oriented tasks, because most of the time the application is in an idle state waiting for user input. This is why there is interpreted Java bytecode running on nearly every other phone. And the phone already interprets Javascript, which is even less efficient than Flash. If Apple is willing to let the user choose whether or not to waste their cycles browsing Javascript-heavy pages, why not give them the same option to run wasteful applications? No, this is entirely about controlling the routes of execution.
Arubis 18y ago
Apple would be crazy to allow Flash. There's two possible outcomes that would come from full Flash compatibility, and neither is good for AAPL: 1. Flash is slow and clunky and sucks battery life -- much like it does on a full-powered Mac. 2. Flash works great and developers use it to sidestep the App Store, bypassing both Apple's stewardship and profitability. I've never seen any indication whatsoever (outside of hungry-for-pageviews rumormongering) that Apple is in the least bit interested in letting Flash on the iPhone.
- nickbtard 18y ago
  >Flash is slow Wrong. Badly coded flash content is slow.A bad developer churns out bad resource hogging code. Its not Flash's fault.
  - Goladus 18y ago
    I don't care whose fault it is. The flash plugin is the only thing that ever causes performance problems for me when browsing, and it happens all the time. If it's purely a flash developer problem I'd say every single flash developer out there is bad and churns out resource hogging code. Either that, or it's the fault of Firefox and Chrome. Whatever the reason, the flash plugin is a nightmare and I cannot wait to wake up.
    - wensing 18y ago
      The real problem is that Flash is a gateway for a lot of graphic artists wanting to make something more powerful on the web. A lot of copy-pasting and poor practices being executed on a powerful engine with a very steep learning curve. By comparison, JavaScript is abused less because it's less appealing to beginners (it lacks the wow-factor).
      - Goladus 18y ago
        I hear you but seriously, my instincts after years of troubleshooting this kind of crap is that the problem is the plug-in itself, not the particular developers that use it. I've seen bad javascript, hell I've seen HTML that can cause performance problems. What's happening with flash seems to be related to the underlying technology. Some users are affected far more than others, and I have noticed very little correlation between particular sites and performance problems. The only constant seems to be: if the site uses flash (and most sites do), there's a high chance browser CPU usage will spike to 90%+ and stay there until it is killed. I think it happens less-often with firefox only because I've got adblock set up and it stops a lot of it from ever being loaded. I really don't think the symptoms would be like that if this was simply a case of developers misusing the platform. Some sites would rarely have issues, others would fail all the time. It's mostly a gut instinct at this point and I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
nickbtard 18y ago
This is what the Apple commercial said: "This is not a watered down version of the Internet, or the mobile version of the Internet, or the kinda sorta looks like the Internet Internet. It’s just the Internet." Unless Apple allows all plugins freely, the commercial was a lie, and Apple is liable for misleading viewers. If Apple is concerned about resource hungry apps burning away battery life, they should have an inbuilt mechanism which warns users of every such instance.The choice of avoiding Flash and saving battery life should belong to end user.
- axod 18y ago
  Flash is in no way the internet. Browsing the web without flash is actually a pretty cool experience. The only thing missing is some video, which should be fixed with the new <video> tag. http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-media-support-video-and-audio-tags-and-scriptability http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-media-support-video-and-au... (I don't know if the iPhone supports this yet, but I'm guessing it will).
  - olefoo 18y ago
    Which codecs? That's a key question.
    - pistoriusp 18y ago
      H.264 seems to be the way ahead for now.
  - nickbtard 18y ago
    If Apple has to stay true to the claims they made in the ads, they must allow ALL plugins. No exceptions. Unless the iphone renders a page the way the the page creator intended it to be rendered, its a watered down version of the page.
pg 18y ago
I wonder if this limitation (not merely banning Flash, but banning interpreters) will turn out to be the weakness that allows a competitor to one day beat the iPhone. There are cases where you really do want to ship code-- not merely to get around a license restriction, but because that's the right way to build something.
- tptacek 18y ago
  That's going to be true exactly up to the moment when Apple reveals they've been a button click away from enabling Flash on every iPhone, thus killing that differentiation.
sabat 18y ago
How about just flash video?
louislouis 18y ago
Hmmm what about the Youtube player on there already? Maybe that should be made available for other FLV video sites
- dbrush 18y ago
  Youtube re-encoded a ton of their videos for iPhone viewing. Perhaps Youtube could offer re-encoding in the cloud or something. A proxy that does this would probably solve the iPhone/Video argument, but it would be expensive to implement and use in practice.
pistoriusp 18y ago
"Adobe says it is working on a version of its popular Flash player for the iPhone..." "Adobe's recent announcement that it is working on a version of Flash for Windows Mobile..." Which phones currently support Flash? I know a certain amount of phones support Flashlite? And I openly welcomed Flashlite when I was dealing with terrible mobile browsers and MIDP app development. Now? I don't particularly care for it...

15 points by iamelgringo 18y ago

dejb 18y ago

If this is truely their approach then the iPhone is going to start looking like a pretty lame platform within a few years. There will be too many cool and interesting new things out there that just don't work on it.

olefoo 18y ago
This is why Android is such a big deal. Yes Apple delivered some real innovation in UI, particularly multitouch. But by trying to enforce lock-in they are eroding the value of their offering.
- Brushfire 18y ago
  Agreed. Everyone else commenting seems to be pointing out the technical hurdles / problems with a flash installation, but they are ignoring the huge business problem with NOT implementing it: customers want it. Eventually, phones are going to come along that allow free apps, your own music, flash, similar browsing experience, and a real keyboard... and smart people will start to switch back. In other words, the technical hurdles here are less important than the business ones. This is Jobs trying to have his iron grip, but in the long run, I dont see it working out.
  - yesimahuman 18y ago
    They might not sell apps/games...but that's better than not selling the phone in the first place!
- bestes 18y ago
  I disagree. I think the massive innovation on the Internet is due to the fact that it's easy to see the code for everything (HTML, CSS, Javascript). Flash (and Silverlight, etc.) are all attempts to hijack the Internet as we know it. They do offer a better experience, but at a cost (freedom, more code, less innovation, licensing fees, patents, higher costs).
allenbrunson 18y ago
in reality, this is a much, MUCH bigger issue than whether some random plugin is or isn't allowed on the iphone. i personally don't like flash. i think adobe has done a poor job of managing it, and that they are a bad steward of what has become the de facto multimedia platform of the web. based on his actions, it's possible to assume that steven p. jobs feels the same way. flash is very entrenched on the desktop, but it has yet to gain much of a foothold in the mobile world. by making the iphone a great big hairy obstacle to adoption, jobs just might derail a mobile future that is similarly dominated by flash. personally, i hope he succeeds!
- dejb 18y ago
  > in reality, this is a much, MUCH bigger issue than whether some random plugin is or isn't allowed on the iphone. That was my point. It is about whether you get to operate your phone the way you want. It is about the percentage of existing and future innovation you will be able to access. Without this the value of the platform will deteriorate. > i personally don't like flash. So you think you or Steve Jobs should get to decide if anyone else can use it. What sort of totalitarian utopia do you have in mind?
  - allenbrunson 18y ago
    Would you agree that jobs gets to decide how the iPhone works? Because that's what this comes down to. flash has always been a terrible experience on the mac. It sucks up ridiculous amounts of CPU, far worse than on Windows. Given the iPhones limited CPU, it would like be even worse there. By not giving in to adobe now, jobs is holding out for faster, better alternatives to emerge.
  - allenbrunson 18y ago
    Would you agree that jobs gets to decide how the iPhone works? Because that's what this comes down to. flash has always been a terrible experience on the mac. It sucks up ridiculous amounts of CPU, far worse than on Windows. Given the iPhones limited CPU, it would like be even worse there. By not giving in to adobe now, jobs is holding out for faster, better alternatives to emerge.
axod 18y ago
You consider flash cool and interesting??? Look at some of the awesome things going on with javascript+html5 - being able to do multitouch, canvas, video tag etc. That is the future, flash is likely to go the same way as Java applets IMHO Who wants java applets on their iphone browser? not me thanks.
- dejb 18y ago
  > You consider flash cool and interesting??? Not particularly no. The point is that new technologies come along all the time and if you they are going to ban anything they don't like they are going to miss out on a substantial proportion of interesting software. > Who wants java applets on their iphone browser? not me thanks. Me. Why not? I'd also like to able to run whatever the F* I like. Why should you or anyone else tell me what I can or can't run?
  - axod 18y ago
    Jailbreak it then and install flash.

dbrush 18y ago

"Don't hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe's Flash software: Apple's terms-of-service agreement prohibits it." That is probably the most trivial issue preventing Flash from running on the iPhone. Companies negotiate and renegotiate agreements all the time.

pchristensen 18y ago
"Companies negotiate"... but does Jobs? What would Adobe have to put on the table to get Jobs to budge?
scott_s 18y ago
The point they're making is that it's not a technical problem, but it violates Apple's fundamental strategy with the iPhone.
there 18y ago
i agree. something as major as flash wouldn't be just another app in the app store, it's something that apple would bundle into the next firmware update and tout in their commercials. there is obviously some other reason for them not wanting it on the phone right now.

makecheck 18y ago

The iPhone has to be concerned about power consumption, and as a general rule unleashing interpreters is risky because it allows "unnecessary" amounts of computation to consume power. Consider Flash video. While it would be nice, is it the most power-efficient way to display video? Ditto for games, or anything else that Flash is used for. There is also the very real problem that Flash is abused for things that people don't want. Pointless intros, advertising, expensive animations...all consuming CPU in a way that is largely beyond the user's control. From the article: "websites that use Flash to render content or navigation won't work on the iPhone"...fine by me, I have never seen a site that did Flash navigation in a way that was more useful than default web navigation (instead, it was just...flashy).

jcl 18y ago
It is unlikely that power consumption has anything to do with the restriction. For one thing, you can write wasteful code just as easily in a compiled language as in an interpreted language, and I have never heard of Apple rejecting an application because it computes in a wasteful fashion. And interpreted languages can run nearly as efficiently as compiled ones for many user-oriented tasks, because most of the time the application is in an idle state waiting for user input. This is why there is interpreted Java bytecode running on nearly every other phone. And the phone already interprets Javascript, which is even less efficient than Flash. If Apple is willing to let the user choose whether or not to waste their cycles browsing Javascript-heavy pages, why not give them the same option to run wasteful applications? No, this is entirely about controlling the routes of execution.

Arubis 18y ago

Apple would be crazy to allow Flash. There's two possible outcomes that would come from full Flash compatibility, and neither is good for AAPL: 1. Flash is slow and clunky and sucks battery life -- much like it does on a full-powered Mac. 2. Flash works great and developers use it to sidestep the App Store, bypassing both Apple's stewardship and profitability. I've never seen any indication whatsoever (outside of hungry-for-pageviews rumormongering) that Apple is in the least bit interested in letting Flash on the iPhone.

nickbtard 18y ago
>Flash is slow Wrong. Badly coded flash content is slow.A bad developer churns out bad resource hogging code. Its not Flash's fault.
- Goladus 18y ago
  I don't care whose fault it is. The flash plugin is the only thing that ever causes performance problems for me when browsing, and it happens all the time. If it's purely a flash developer problem I'd say every single flash developer out there is bad and churns out resource hogging code. Either that, or it's the fault of Firefox and Chrome. Whatever the reason, the flash plugin is a nightmare and I cannot wait to wake up.
  - wensing 18y ago
    The real problem is that Flash is a gateway for a lot of graphic artists wanting to make something more powerful on the web. A lot of copy-pasting and poor practices being executed on a powerful engine with a very steep learning curve. By comparison, JavaScript is abused less because it's less appealing to beginners (it lacks the wow-factor).
    - Goladus 18y ago
      I hear you but seriously, my instincts after years of troubleshooting this kind of crap is that the problem is the plug-in itself, not the particular developers that use it. I've seen bad javascript, hell I've seen HTML that can cause performance problems. What's happening with flash seems to be related to the underlying technology. Some users are affected far more than others, and I have noticed very little correlation between particular sites and performance problems. The only constant seems to be: if the site uses flash (and most sites do), there's a high chance browser CPU usage will spike to 90%+ and stay there until it is killed. I think it happens less-often with firefox only because I've got adblock set up and it stops a lot of it from ever being loaded. I really don't think the symptoms would be like that if this was simply a case of developers misusing the platform. Some sites would rarely have issues, others would fail all the time. It's mostly a gut instinct at this point and I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

nickbtard 18y ago

This is what the Apple commercial said: "This is not a watered down version of the Internet, or the mobile version of the Internet, or the kinda sorta looks like the Internet Internet. It’s just the Internet." Unless Apple allows all plugins freely, the commercial was a lie, and Apple is liable for misleading viewers. If Apple is concerned about resource hungry apps burning away battery life, they should have an inbuilt mechanism which warns users of every such instance.The choice of avoiding Flash and saving battery life should belong to end user.

axod 18y ago
Flash is in no way the internet. Browsing the web without flash is actually a pretty cool experience. The only thing missing is some video, which should be fixed with the new <video> tag. http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-media-support-video-and-audio-tags-and-scriptability http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-media-support-video-and-au... (I don't know if the iPhone supports this yet, but I'm guessing it will).
- olefoo 18y ago
  Which codecs? That's a key question.
  - pistoriusp 18y ago
    H.264 seems to be the way ahead for now.
- nickbtard 18y ago
  If Apple has to stay true to the claims they made in the ads, they must allow ALL plugins. No exceptions. Unless the iphone renders a page the way the the page creator intended it to be rendered, its a watered down version of the page.

pg 18y ago

I wonder if this limitation (not merely banning Flash, but banning interpreters) will turn out to be the weakness that allows a competitor to one day beat the iPhone. There are cases where you really do want to ship code-- not merely to get around a license restriction, but because that's the right way to build something.

tptacek 18y ago
That's going to be true exactly up to the moment when Apple reveals they've been a button click away from enabling Flash on every iPhone, thus killing that differentiation.

sabat 18y ago

How about just flash video?

louislouis 18y ago

Hmmm what about the Youtube player on there already? Maybe that should be made available for other FLV video sites

dbrush 18y ago
Youtube re-encoded a ton of their videos for iPhone viewing. Perhaps Youtube could offer re-encoding in the cloud or something. A proxy that does this would probably solve the iPhone/Video argument, but it would be expensive to implement and use in practice.

pistoriusp 18y ago

"Adobe says it is working on a version of its popular Flash player for the iPhone..." "Adobe's recent announcement that it is working on a version of Flash for Windows Mobile..." Which phones currently support Flash? I know a certain amount of phones support Flashlite? And I openly welcomed Flashlite when I was dealing with terrible mobile browsers and MIDP app development. Now? I don't particularly care for it...