« Previous post
Next post »

March 5, 2008

Adobe’s Flash Not Good Enough for Steve Jobs

Mark Hendrickson

56 comments »

This morning CNN reported that Steve Jobs has come out saying that Adobe’s Flash technology simply isn’t suitable for the iPhone.

Jobs believes that the desktop version of Flash runs too slowly on the iPhone, the cellphone version of Flash isn’t functional enough, and “there’s this missing product in the middle” that would presumably run fast enough for the iPhone while retaining enough functionality.

Adobe doesn’t appear to have any plans for this so-called “product in the middle” so his remarks suggest that iPhone won’t support Flash anytime soon. This is not going to make developers or consumers happy given how important Flash has become for the web, whether it be for delivering rich applications or video.

Those who were hoping that Flash support would be announced with the SDK tomorrow will be especially disappointed. Perhaps Jobs was trying to soften the blow a little bit by announcing his Flash intentions a day early.

Of course, as Duncan speculates, this provides an opportunity for Microsoft to swoop in and enable the iPhone with Silverlight. But is that even imaginable?

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 11:33 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Robert Accettura's Fun With Wordage

    March 5th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

  2. Adobe Forging Ahead with Flash for the iPhone Despite Jobs’ Remarks

    March 18th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

  3. Spreading Funkyness» Blog Archive » Flash Player on iPhone

    March 19th, 2008 at 6:15 am

  4. Apple stabs Adobe in the back | Alex McFarlane

    March 26th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

  5. open end funds » Adobe Forging Ahead with Flash for the iPhone

    March 28th, 2008 at 11:47 am

  6. 5.4 million iPhones sold, but the phone still missing mobile marketing features | Inside Mobile Marketing

    April 29th, 2008 at 7:32 am

  7. Adobe’s Open Screen Project: Write Once, Flash Everywhere

    April 30th, 2008 at 9:01 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Sean

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Damn that sucks big time. I don’t like sites that use flash as “the site” (e.g. the entire interface), but the iPhone needs flash support because of all the video sites that use it exclusively now. The internet on the iPhone just feels incomplete without it.

  2. Jason Kiesel

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:48 am

    It’s my guess that Steve wanted Adobe to pony up some money. The iPhone needs Adobe, not the other way around. Get a clue, Apple.

    Jason Kiesel
    Founder
    FREEDOMSPEAKS.COM

  3. Jason

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:49 am

    I feel like a puppy just got run over. Maybe I’m overreacting, or I don’t like puppies, or this genuinely does suck. Have there been hacked implementations of Flash on the iPhone?

  4. james

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:51 am

    what a dumb move by Steve!

    I’d hoped he learned his mistakes from the MAC vs. PC. It’s all about applications. This is very disappointing from a web developer point of view.

  5. Bergstieger

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am

    Thank god! Flash is a terrible development/runtime environment. Flash was designed to be an animation platform, not a robust application development environment. Flash is a complete hack.

    I’m sure everyone is disappointed because there are so many Flash apps out there, but I assume Apple is thinking about needing a solid development platform rather than supporting existing apps.

  6. Scott

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am

    I’d love to see silverlight on the iPhone. You can program with any language for silverlight (within reason) like ruby python or C#.

  7. Roy

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    @6: best website I’ve seen all day. You win.

  8. EH

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Looks like there may be some battles brewing in Adobeland. I just came across this “ad” for Adobe trying to bribe disgruntled employees (who are searching CL jobs) to let Adobe’s tiger teams into their companies to push Flex:

    http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sad/596500186.html

  9. D

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    @5 The fact that you just said what you did shows you’ve no idea what the evolution of the Flash Player has been. There is a completely new VM, a new language, and outreach by Adobe into the open-source arena.

    Stop pirating outdated IDEs and buy a clue.

  10. Floyd Price

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Gutted!

  11. jim

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    @ Bergstieger: Flash may be “a complete hack” but that doesn’t change the reality that it is the standard for a HUGE amount of Web content including games, widgets, video, etc. Not supporting it puts the lie to Apple’s claims that browsing on the iPhone is “not the mobile Internet”. Without Flash, the iPhone is definitely a subset of the ‘net…ie. another flavor of mobile Internet.

    I love my iPhone but this is truly boneheaded move by Apple. Screw making “a solid development platform”. History is littered with technically awesome but very dead platforms that put themselves at cross-purposes with the tide of demand. This is a consumer product, not a technologist sandbox. Consumers know and use Flash already. The demand is there. Standing in its way is just plain stupid.

  12. mikebell

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Flash is a POS! WORST piece of software on my machine. It consumes ~50% of CPU just playing a video. No wonder Jobs doesn’t like it… it would drain iPhone’s battery in half an hour!!!

    In short, Flash = crap.

  13. Kevin Fleming

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    Who needs flash? http://foscommerce.com/blog/in.....-platform/

  14. Microkid

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Flash would absolutely be a huge strain on the iPhone’s memory household.

    But javascript animation doesn’t run smoothly on the iPhone right now and the same seems to be the case with animated GIF’s. So the problem might just be something in the way video is done, at least in Safari.

    Doesn’t this more or less prove the problem on the iPhones side?

  15. randy

    March 5th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Steve Jobs is disgruntled because Apple Computers with G4 procs and earlier don’t run flash. Load any flash page on an Apple Cube and the result is choppy 3fps garbage that eventually seizes your machine.

    Am I an idiot? No. I have witnessed this behavior on scores of Apple Computers. Similarly, the iPhone is just too weak for Fash.

    I disagree with Mark Hendrickson. Flash has NOT become “important for the web”. Flash has become important for **YouTube videos**. Otherwise, MORE and MORE people are BLOCKING flash ads, SKIPPING flash intros, and ABANDONING flash-based sites.

    Even THREE YEAR OLDS have learned to click ‘close’ well before all these crapola Flash sites with stupid preloader can hit 12%.

    Flash is pathetic. PDFs are pathetic. Adobe is a disgrace. Flash is a decade over by now. The web is about content, not collages.

    Flash developer? Flippant retard.

  16. Andrei Potorac

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    As a Flash dev this is certainly bad news. Not only we won’t be able to develop for the iPhone, but we’re not able to use any of the amazing website out that use this platform. It’s like we’re getting half of the internet. :(

  17. Peter Antypas

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    Thank you Steve :)

  18. Kevin Goldsmith

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    @8

    You are clueless. Most companies have user research groups visit customers to see how real people use their software or their competitors software. That is how good software gets better.

  19. advertboy

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:04 pm

    MAN Flash fanboys get a clue.. Why can’t you accept that Flash desktop runs like a dog and eats CPU!!!! Flash lite is not functional enough!!!

    Thats the plain truth! That’s why it’s not making its way to the iPhone just yet! If the specs on the iPhone was like a desktop then it would have flash! BUT IT AINT.

    Imagine flash as it were was installed on your iPhone and it caused the bugger to crash exponential times or worse caused it to perform attrociously slow!

    Geez accept it for what it is, a technology that is not suited for the iPhone of today!!!!

  20. Dave

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    I simply believe Steve is a tad bit disgruntled for the lack of effort by Adobe to create a flash player suitable for iPhone hardware specifications. But then again, Steve may simply have a trick up his sleeve for something even better for the iPhone…

  21. Peter Antypas

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

    And, btw. This is an opportunity for REAL programmers, masters of REAL programming languages to make REAL applications.

    So there !!!!

  22. Brandon

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    I don’t want Flash on my iPhone. I thank Steve Jobs everyday that I don’t see those dumb ass “punch the monkey” ads on my iPhone. Flash is a slow POS that needs some major work or just needs to die. Flash is NOT the internet.

  23. Avatar

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    This is a huge opportunity for silverlight. i can guess Scott G must have jumped and sent a representative to apple just as he knew or callled Ray so he calls jobs. if the silverlight team archives to put the iphone officially on board then the mobile war of flash against Silverlight would be mostly won for silverlight before even it got to start.

  24. Anonymous

    March 5th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    We don’t need no stinking adobe in the iPhone.
    Silverlight? HAHAHA that’s a joke right?

  25. Philipp Lenssen

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    Does iPhone support Canvas (normal Safari does)? That can be used to create vector animations and more, like for games etc.

  26. Rob H

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    It has been speculated that perhaps Apple is working on its own version of Flash. Maybe Steve will announce this tomorrow. Who knows…your guess is as good as mine.
    R

  27. scarabic

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    Forget Flash… SAFARI on the iPhone runs too slow already. EDGE is probably hiding this for most, but even when connected by WiFi browsing is a chore. You can’t even back-button without waiting for a full re-load and re-render. Apple needs to speed up the iPhone significantly anyway. When they’ve done that, they can whine for Flash to be better optimized (as, surely, it could be).

    You just *know* that somewhere in the Apple hive some old QuickTime proponents have risen from their dungeons to clamor once more for QT to make another run as the cross-platform rich media platform of choice for the future. Ha-ha!

  28. Dallas J Clark

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    well there goes the idea of making games for iPhones, I hope no one counter reacts to this comment and says “java” (I’m not even sure if the iPhone supports java - does it?)

  29. John

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    this is just another issue with the iphone and another reason i won’t buy it. it’s a p.o.s.

  30. Jasper

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    With Flash Player 9, AVM2 and AS3, Flash has matured into a feature-rich, efficient and full-fledged OOP language. The current performance is orders of magnitude faster when compared to previous versions. Don’t blame the language/platform when it’s actually unskilled developers writing buggy and inefficient code that gives Flash a bad name. The same could be said for poorly written Java, Javascript, .net, php, etc…. There are numerous useful/high-quality applications, widgets and games written in AS.

    As for support on the iPhone, I find this truly dis-heartening. I was hoping, by now, to be writing Flash apps for the iPhone. That said, I would like to see Adobe re-think Flash Lite for the next generation of mobile devices. I do agree that Flash Lite is lacking.

  31. chris

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Thank God Apple didn’t invent breathing too - otherwise Jobs would be saying “we only allow this type of air - not that one” … to shut Flash out of a device that claims to be the worlds best mobile internet device is utterly ridiculous. His claims that the iphone doesn’t have the power to run Flash is a failing of the iphone - not Flash. Jobs is an idiot … they should sack him … oh, been there, done that!

  32. CG

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    Do you really think this is about the inner workings and specs of flash or the fact that the number of streaming players available represent a threat to itunes sales?

    Steve, get over it and give the masses seeqpod their iphones.

    CG

  33. G

    March 5th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    I’m happy there’s no flash on the iphone, that means less work for me since I do Interactive Advertising!!!
    Yes to the no flash on iphone!!!

  34. James Gardiner

    March 5th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Flash is highly optimised and has a lot of MACHINE CODE in its code base. Saying its not good enough performance is BLATANT FUD (Fear uncertainty and dough) to make excuses for not implementing Flash.
    2 issues would exist.

    1. Adobe licenses COST. I imagine Apple has been trying to get Adobe to do a good deal on this. This is how Adobe makes the real money from Flash really. Not from selling the dev. software so much.

    2. Flash is a type of Jail-break for the Iphone and Steve would simply not want it anyway. Its just all the users are asking for it. It is a Jail Break as it lets you make very RICH applications for the iPhone. Something Steve/Apple wants to control 100% and charge for. It also brings another form of Video to the phone, which again takes away from the iPhone pushing you towards using iTunes.

    Flash on the iPhone has always had a hard hill to climb. Its exactly what I want and what users should want if they understood the added features it brings to the phone.

    Its just not good business for Apple.

    James

  35. Johnny Wadd

    March 5th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    Very disappointing news. The iphone, and ipod touch would be much better with flash

  36. Alex Linhares

    March 5th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    Adobe should respond by saying they’re disappointed but throwing their development efforts into Android. Apple are being such morons… everyone gets an iPhone for AT&T? No.. people jailbreak it; and sell it in countries where it is “not available”. The “revolutionary iPhone”, I fear, will turn out to be rather like the original “revolutionary Macintosh”, a product which eventually loses on the long run for lack of apps and a “good-enough” open alternative.

    I spend zillions in Apple products, but really, F*ck their closed control freak mentality.

  37. Rajiv Singh

    March 5th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    The iPhone is a piece of shit.

  38. Raphael Morozov

    March 5th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    Actually, the iPhone is not a piece of shit. A jailbroken iPhone is a fantastic device. It’s just unfortunate that Jobs still hasn’t learned that software is what drives consumers to a given platform over the long term - not hardware

  39. A.T.

    March 5th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    Poor Steve Almighty seems can’t persuade himself to deliver something lower than he assigned as level of deliverable experience. It is finally time for him to learn that one can not sue laws of physics and economics in the court or push the limits of Nature in any other way - if you have no or poor FPU and matrix ops in CPU, it is darn difficult or impossible to deal with vector-based graphics :)

  40. tricia

    March 5th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    This was predictable. No executive at Adobe including the CEO has a relationship with Steve. He’s enjoying watching Adobe squirm. And then he will acquire them.

  41. Peter Antypas

    March 5th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    Apple is a lifestyle company. They are a brand. They will always do things their way. They don’t have users, they have FANS. Remember the lines outside of AT&T stores?

    Adobe really has no place to go. They’re a tired old company, still trying to figure out why none wants to pay $XXX.00 for a software package anymore.

  42. magixman

    March 5th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    Flash is a kludge. I don’t mean that it is bad, poorly written or for what it does is a resource hog. It is a kludge because the native model for the browser, HTML/DOM is insufficient for all the needs of rich application developers which has created the need for a parallel universe. Parallel universes are not cheap. This would be particularly evident on an underpowered mobile device. If Flash were supported you would end up with a very pokey experience which is not the folks at Apple have in mind. I think they make the right call in this case even if it limits the user experience for now.

  43. Dan

    March 5th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    Strange that i-mode phones in Japan have supported Flash for several year snow..

    doesn’t make sense that something that works fine for developers and users in Japan, on the worlds most successful mobile internet platform, can’t work on an iphone which probably has a more sophisticated operation system.

    http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/eng.....index.html

    i always wondered where apple’s got their “i” in ipod and iphone.. i think i-mode :)

  44. lazysupper

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

    As always, Jobs has an interesting perspective… it seems that Flash is too slow for the iPhone, rather than the iPhone being to slow for Flash.

  45. Ree Tanjuatco

    March 5th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    Next thing we know Adobe is pulling out all their products from all future version of Macs

  46. Velioncho

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:54 am

    This is old news. I read about it I guess couple of weeks back in WSJ. Why is it news now?

  47. John

    March 6th, 2008 at 1:29 am

    I do not own an iphone and am confused. Isn’t youtube on iphone and aren’t all youtube videos flash? if the iphone does not suport flash, how does it ply youtube videos?

    Thanks

  48. Rajiv Singh

    March 6th, 2008 at 2:09 am

    Because a selection of videos has been converted to another video format that the p.o.s. iPhone can handle.

  49. Daniel Goldman

    March 7th, 2008 at 9:52 am

    The question is whether Apple will look to SVG as an alternative for Flash. SVG is lightweight, open standard, and is already supported by Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

    I’ve speculated about this on my blog. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

    Daniel
    Opera Software

« Previous post
Next post »