“Yes, Flash Lite is crap. But HTML5 is not being adopted on smartphones either. On the desktop Flash has >98% penetration and HTML5 (with video tag support) has less than 1%. Putting aside the very large assumption that MS is willing to kill Silverlight by adopting the HTML5 video tag, you are predicting that support for the HTML5 video tag in installed browsers will reach 90% (I chose this because that is about when it becomes vaguely viable to primarily develop for it) before Adobe can come up with a decent, lean version of Flash. I’m just saying that I don’t think Adobe are that stupid/incompetent.”

Also, from Adobe:

“HTML 5 faces many challenges,” says Dave Story, vice president of developer tools at Adobe. “The browser market remains highly fragmented, and incompatibilities between browsers reign. The HTML 5 timeline states that it will be at least a decade before the evolving HTML 5/CSS 3 efforts are finalized, and it remains to be seen what parts will be implemented consistently across all browsers. In the meantime, the Flash platform will continue to deliver a ubiquitous, consistent platform that enables ever richer, more engaging user experiences.”

http://tech.yah...infoworld/79291

* Even though this is rarely covered by mainstream tech writers, not everyone that owns an iPhone wants Flash. Knowledgeable iPhone users and developers know that Flash is crap and they do NOT want it on their iPhones.

* Most tech writers seem oblivious to the fact that Apple isn’t going to allow 3rd party animation, video (Flash) or runtime environments (Flash, Java, Adobe AIR, etc.) on the iPhone. Sure, there are technical reasons, but strategically, Apple isn’t going to allow core iPhone OS functionality and usability to get fragmented by having 3rd parties play at this level. A Flash-based game will act differently from one developed using Cocoa Touch, for example. And performance won’t be as good, etc.

* Apple has already decided that it’s going to use open technologies for video, animation and graphics on the iPhone: HTML5 video support, CSS animation (works now: http://webkit.o...ss-animation-2/) and H.264 for video playback and streaming, OpenGL for 3D.

* Flash not being available on the iPhone isn’t an oversight; it’s a deliberate decision to not having some other company’s proprietary animation and runtime environment on their device, especially since it doesn’t advance things for Apple in the long term. Same thing for Java J2ME which is for lowest common denominator computing and that’s not what Apple does–at all.

And you are also ignoring the issue of codecs. Firefox 3.5 for example will only support Theora which is significantly inferior to h264. I don’t see content producers moving across to Theora when you can make a h264-encoded .mp4 which works right now in Flash, Quicktime and Silverlight.

flash is so much more then video playback

Why bother buying an iPhone game for $1.99 when I can play a flash game online which is just as fun?

Apple probably sees no threat for allowing flash videos to play through Mobile Safari, since they allow full access to YouTube anyway.

And if Apple really wanted Flash on the iPhone, they could have easily up the specs on the new iPhone 3GS to support it.

The BBC tried doing as you say for the iPhone and suffered a huge piracy issue, and everyone else in the content industries paid attention and won’t make the same mistake – and Adobe and Microsoft are both profiting nicely from bolting things in to Flash and Silverlight to make such content capture more difficult.

The same reason is why HTML5 isn’t going to take off with the big content sites either – it’s too easy to grab the file when they’ve agreed contractually not to make it available for download.

And that’s why Flash will need to come to more devices, or an HTMLx will need to come with some form of content protection built in.

Heck, after talking to it’s rights team, I’ll be fairly surprised if YouTube even switches over to HTML5.

I’ve written about why Flash isn’t needed or wanted on the iPhone a few times now: http://www.back...6bad22ba5627e84

Firstly, this is just someone with Perian installed. Quicktime has been able to play FLV files this way for many years.

Secondly, even if it were true, how on earth would being able to play an FLV file be of any help in playing the SWF files embedded into video sites? The video codecs have never been an issue – it’s the lack of Flash which means the embedded *players* cannot be viewed.

I find it a bit worrying that not only do you not have a basic technical knowledge of the subjects you’re posting about, but you don’t seem to be doing a shred of research either.

2. You can export from Flash a Quicktime MOV with the interactive capabilities of Flash8 or lower. That means the SWF is embedded as a separate Layer in the Quicktime video.