Flash and the iPhone?

Cross posted from JustAGovy

So here’s a completely random thought. I happening to catch an article about the new message Adobe presents on it’s site when you visit it from an iPhone. Yes, seems Adobe is a bit ticked off at Apple…still. But what if there’s a good reason Apple isn’t moving on the addition of Flash to the iPhone? What if they’re building their own “Flash-like” technology?

You’ve heard the talk about comic books, and regular books, on the iPhone and maybe the iTablet. Well, in my mind to have any book act fluid, quickly turn pages, and probably even have the pages flip just like you’re turning a real book…then some Flash-like technology is probably desired. Flash doesn’t run too well on a Mac (as the article points out). So why not do what Apple does best and just create something just as fluid and showcase it with a new product. Hell, Microsoft has Silverlight, Adobe has Flash, why can’t Apple have “iFlow?” (totally made up product name, but I like it).

Additionally, Apple would probably offer its iFlow technology to developers for use in their own products. We all know how Apple is able to push their own products and make them ubiquitous. I suspect that when they unleash the “iTablet” they’ll also introduce their new Flash-like product that will be fully integrated into the iTablet and pushed as an upgrade to iPhones and iTouches. There will probably also be some Apple product that converts Flash movies into iFlow movies with a few clicks to ease the pain of developers converting their sites to a new format.

That’s my prediction. There you have it. Take it or leave it.

Note: This post is of my own personal opinion and is not endorsed or supported by any local, state, or federal government agency.

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GovLoop

It’s interesting to see how many “frenemies” there are in software. One day they are partners and next they are enemies. Will be interesting to see how it develops.

Kaya Walton

Why would they want to compete with Flash, though? Shouldn’t they be learning their lessons from the success (or rather failure) of Silverlight to break into the Flash-like market? Many have invested and are still investing tons of money into Flash technology (and other Adobe products that are derative of Flash, such as Flex). I attended Adobe MAX last month where Adobe execs made a huge deal about a future deployment of Flash being able to work in iPhones. If Adobe is making an effort to adapt its products to confirm to Apple’s needs, why try to compete in an area that’s not their forte?

Scott Horvath

Those are good questions. Adobe has been pushing to get Flash on the iPhone since the iPhone first came out. Apple has never allowed it on the iPhone because they say it’s a memory hog. So Adobe has worked to put a Flash-lite version together that would work for the iPhone, and for Apple. Apparently that doesn’t seem to be enough either. The fact that Apple is still holding out on putting Flash on the iPhone makes me suspect that they’re not interested at all.

Something else to keep in mind is that Apple has been doing great in terms of it’s iPhone sales to date. Despite the lack of Flash support in the browser, they’re still selling them and still turning profit. So if they’re doing so well without Flash support then what’s to compel them to add it in there now? Would it really make a difference? I don’t know.

With Microsoft I feel like it’s a different story all together. Microsoft is one of those companies that when they put out new products there’s an immediate negative reaction or criticism from the tech community. Most people know the tech community are the ones that make or break a product. If they don’t adopt it, if they’re not willing to try it out, then you can pretty much guess how it’ll fair in the wider market. That’s probably why Silverlight hasn’t taken off because the tech community hasn’t really accepted it as much as Flash.

But if Apple, however, was to come out with their own version and then fold it into every device (plus offer easy conversion tools), I’m sure the tech community would go along. A lot of the tech community loves Apple (just like they love Google). Apple certainly has great products and they always manage to find a way to push they’re technologies (not matter how different or similar they are) into the tech community to gain adoption. So, I’m sure that if they came out with their own version there would be some negative feedback…but I’m guessing they would somehow make it work. Plus, if they build in support to the iPhone to have that sort of Flash-like capability, developers would most certainly jump onboard to convert their existing Flash products to Apple’s format just to have that functionality back on their sites.

Again, who knows what they’ll do. They may accept Flash finally and move on. Then again, they may never do anything and just wait till they can adopt HTML 5 which would allow for animation-like capabilities. We’ll just have to wait and see.