Flash on iPhone?

Filed in archive Software on March 19, 2008

by Dylan Parker

A blog entry transcribes the Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen's answer to the question asked during the 2008 Q1 investors relations call:

"Well, you know, we really believe that Flash is synonymous with the Internet and frankly anybody who wants to browse the Web and experience the Web in all its glory really needs Flash support. I mean, we were very excited about the announcement from Windows mobile adoption of Flash on their devices and the fact that we've shipped a half billion devices now, non-PC devices - so we're also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone and we'll work with Apple. We've evaluated the SDK we can now start to develop the flash player ourselves. And, we think it benefits our joint customers so we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device."

Despite possible iPhone SDK licensing issues, Adobe seems bent on having Flash on the iPhone. Personally, I do not like Flash, specially its implementation on Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, which is very unstable. If Adobe cannot fix it, what makes them provide a version that will not crash the iPhone every so often? I'd rather have Flash-based services, such as YouTube, to provide an alternative non-Flash version like the H.264-based version of YouTube, which is currently supported by the iPhone.

How about you - do you want Flash on your iPhone?