Why do you people want flash so bad? Think about it-- the primary uses of flash are:

1. Bloated as a mofo flash based web designs -- The last thing I want to see on my mobile browser (or any browser for that matter) is a friggen 28 loading animation.

2. flash video modules -- H.264, mpeg, avi, wmv...there are too many formats to name that work just as well for video as a flash video

3. animated ads -- nuff said

mrbrownstone

F*ckin Jobs.

el bryanto

Flash works fine on the Nokia Nxx series (e.g. N810). For example YouTube works with pretty good framerates without any special "mobile version" of the website. So much for the superriority of OS X when it comes to performance or capabilities. But yes, the UI on the iPhone is very pretty!!

Kim98

@RobotVampire: Adobe developing it makes sense because it increases the number of people using Flash.

Canadian Impostor

Even the PSP can do Flash!

Yeebles

Flash, this. Flash, that.

My Treo can't even render HTML properly, you ungrateful bastards.

JacquesAss

Flash on the iphone? No. Its about Flash on the internet. If you're going to offer "the real internet" then damnit, its gotta have flash. Or movie watching. or Java. These things are not optional if you want "the real internet" and not "the kiddie pool" version.

Scuba Steve

my guess is jobs doesn't really care about how well mobile flash works. He's just a total control freak and wants everybody to have to look to him for all of life's electronic answers.

dantaylor08

@WilCon: Why should Adobe eat the cost of developing a version of flash for the iPhone? Maybe if Apple offered to share the cost, but I doubt that would happen.

RobotVampire

I can't wait for Mobile Firefox to be released with the new SDK. The three biggest items on my wishlist are:
-Saved/Auto-complete Passwords
-Select text and google search/definition/etc
-Mobile Flash compatible

Say goodbye to Safari if they can keep the browsing experience the same otherwise...

mpjohnst

I swear if Jobs said mud was great to eat with toast, most of you would make reasons to agree with that.

Bring flash to mobile OSX. Nokia have done it successfully with S60 and Maemo, and others are are following suit. Its not all about youtube.

Create plugins to block out ads and other malicious content if you must, but don't stifle the fun of the web and say its a pointless endeavour to include such a widely used web standard.

We can only hope.

Damn, it disgusts me to see what some of you say and how blindly you agree without a shade of grey. well, free speech and all that. I just pray its the minority.

alukard

@Zakintosh

You hit the nail on the head (or Gruber did).

My personal taste: I don't like Flash websites at all so I am kind of glad that they won't be gunking up my iPhone anytime soon.

I think Gizmodo completely missed Apple/Jobs' position - Apple doesn't want Adobe to create a "Goldilocks-esque middle version" of Flash but rather for the mobile web to embrace quicktime instead of Flash.

chefmitch

DIE FLASH, DIE. There, I said it. Oh, Flash is cute and all, but COME ON.

Jobso is no fool- Flash is a defacto standard on the desktop, but there is no dominant mobile standard yet. Why should he hand that kind of power to Adobe? Why, I fully expect to see Apple release a super-Dashboard environment for the iPhone, that adds some graphics API calls to Javascript. They'll release the API headers as an open spec, and try and topple Flash from the mobile side.

t3knomanser

Ya, I am sure your hurting as a consumer by not having Flash, Adam. Give me a break.

freakshow1

well, since most of the owner of iPhones are "elites" it seems obvious that all the websites are doing a "iphone friendly version" of their page. i mean, the mighty CEO wants to show his friends how awesome is his/her new toy "look ma! my webthingy on my iphone! cool!!"

pek

FlashLite - Adobe's Mobile Flash platform is very very limited compared to the real Flash Player. Using it on the iPhone would still mean most Flash content probably including a lot of the major video sites would not work correctly.

Flash Player 9 is a performance hog. It can barely eek out an acceptable frame rate rendering a small number of objects/behaviors on a full blown bleeding edge desktop let alone on a slow-ish handset. The player has very little support for hardware acceleration (it is just now adding a glitchy and somewhat slow version of video acceleration for fullscreen video, does not support hardware 3d cards that most desktops have, and certainly doesn't have rendering code designed to speed up sprite rendering by leveraging hardware). Try comparing a Flash9 "papervision 3d" experience (nice but may as well be an old Playstation 1 game c.1997), to a modern game on the same computer, for example.

A while back Sony CLIE handsets had a custom Sony-only build of the 'real' Flash Player (well, it was about a generation back from the then current version for the web). From what I recall Sony built this port in house, licensing the Flash Player code (not the other way around).

For Adobe to make a custom Flash Player for iPhone that really worked at an acceptable level they would need to do something they've barely begun to do with the web player: they would need to redevelop the player ground up to really use everything it can of the hardware it is sitting on. It is probably unreasonable to believe they will do this for the iPhone when they don't even do this with their desktop player/plugin.

Apple seems to be embracing the trend of websites to go AJAX and focus on JavaScript and tricky HTML interfaces. The performance of AJAX applications on the iPhone isn't too bad, but still needs to be optimized for iPhone like any other site would need to be (like facebook, etc.) to make an ideal experience. Apple's own sites do not use Flash, but use a nice blend of AJAX and Quicktime to deliver content (take a look at the new .mac gallery for example).

Are long comments a faux pas? Oops...

alinear

Maybe it is also about those annoying little Flash ads on every web page (I confess that have made some of those). Web surfing on Edge is already slooow, and adding a crap load of 30k downloads to the mix will destroying any enjoyment I have with the web on iPhone.

jacksonwhole

Hm. NetFront 3.5 can support Flash. How'd that happen?

lefty-

@iotashan: Adobe is the one biggish company Apple might actually buy. But whatever happens, flash on the iPhone is just a matter of time.

frigg

It's more likely that a 3rd party browser will be released which supports Flash...(think FireFox mobile)

Mr. Black

I'm definitely with John Gruber on this one. Apple makes this crazy little product called QuickTime, which used to be the defacto standard for video on the web. They have an opportunity to redefine that standard starting with the mobile web. Keeping Flash off of the iPhone is a pretty great way to go about doing that.

Zakintosh

@apt94jesse: I don't really think ATT has much say what goes on and off the iPhone. Remember that the iPhone is sold in other markets and if Apple had a different version of the phone for foreign markets that had cooler features due to ATT's complaints , people would scream bloody murder.

markarian

" Funny, Mobile Flash seems to work OK on all of the other phones that it's installed on."

• No, no it doesn't.

Plus, except for Scrabulous I haven't missed it at all. If flash were there the processor would work hard to render pages and the battery would due faster. Flash sucks on Mac OS X and it sucks on the ARM CPUS. Adobe is the issue here, not Apple, and I hope Adobe never come through.

Leonard Nimrod

*GASP* a critical view on Jobs and Apple on Gizmodo? I see the LIGHT! heh.

But yes. iPhone/iTouch needs flash support. I don't like not being able to show possible clients my website on the fly (though showing photos directly on the Touch is a bit easier anyways).

wizardofpants

@Buran: Check out Adobe Flex and AIR. For that matter, also Google "Adobe Thermo". Flash is the new delivery platform for awesome UI experiences. Forget ads and YouTube embeds... we're talking world-class applications here.

iotashan

I just want to watch Hulu on my iPod Touch...is that too much to ask for?

Chimera

Eh, Flash Lite sucks. Can't APPLE just get some code and make a version that would work with most video sites, ignore ad banners and cook me my breakfast? Is regular flash truly too unweildly to use on phones, or are we just more worried about how pathetic loading times are over EDGE?

SausageAndOnion

@FuzzysFriedChicken: Royalties? Do you think Apple wants Adobe to pay up to get Flash on the iPhone?

I can guarantee that Adobe isn't looking for money for making Flash for the iPhone. Flash is their gateway product, just like Acrobat... They make the money on server software (Flash Media Server, LiveCycle Data Services, ColdFusion) and other services, which encourage people to use Flash as the front-end UI.

Remember, the big selling point of flash is that it works identically across platforms and browsers.

iotashan

Flash wasn't meant to be used to build UIs anyway. I welcome Flash being dropped as there's already platform-neutral ways of embedding video (MPEG for instance) and I grow tired of unlinkable websites that are nothing but a huge flash applet.

Buran

@apt94jesse: Now that's just silly. Flash 9 supports H.264, which is exactly what the iPhone streams now when you watch YouTube.

iotashan

Jobs is correct... Flash Lite is too wimpy for the iPhone... it only supports Actionscript 2, which means that it will work with most content made with Flash 8 or earlier.

Considering that most new Flash apps that come out are now written for Flash 9, it would be silly for Adobe to port Flash Lite over to the iPhone. I also agree that the fully-fledged Flash 9 would probably chew through the iPhone's battery like a snake in a pickle barrel (kudos to whomever gets that reference).

Drunken discussions with Adobe employees have confirmed that something is in the works, and that they probably shouldn't have said anything.

iotashan

Apple has to feel the pressure from AT&T to keep Flash at bay. I mean, if the iphone supported flash video, think how much more bandwidth AT&T would have to support, especially since the iphone plans are all unlimited bandwidth.

My guess is that Apple is just stalling until they can hold out no longer, giving AT&T time to make sure they can handle the coming bandwidth load.

apt94jesse

This is a tough one. There's no way that the iphone is going with mobile flash. The whole point of Safari on the iphone is that it's a "real" internet. I doubt that was easy for Apple & getting Adobe on board to do a real flash that works on the iphone is tough.

The SDK won't help. Best case scenario it offers wide powerful support for applications. It will not support anything like system level components. Flash, begin a Safari plug-in to be used by various web sites will fall closer to "system component" than application.

reverse

@arch05: I thought he was saying Fanboy is unite, as in all your base are belong to us.

mildretard

I bet this is an issue of royalties, not technology.

FuzzysFriedChicken

Everyone on here who can't distinguish between the possessive and the plural needs to STFU. Thanks.

arch05

My decision to not jump on the jesusphone bandwagon is looking better and better all the time.

mildretard

@MBPro:
I'm right there with you MBPro. Fanboy all the way.

Let's hope that these rumors are wrong and we do get flash support.

Fanboy's unite!

frostoy

I'm hoping the SDK will open things up enough to allow a developer to figure it out and bypass the Jobs altogether, save, save, save. There... now I have one more save than you in my first para, save one typo in yours "one isse".

zombo

So were upset that a company demands better products to give to it's customers? Instead they should release totally incomplete versions with non functioning pieces? Isn't that called Microsoft?

WilCon

This blows... and I'm sure Adobe will just be jumping through hoops to get that little niche widget out real soon... I'm still fumming that the damned iTouch doesn't have a camera.

tamoko

Yet companies are beading head over heel to make iPhone friendly versions of websites.

APPLE OWNS EVERYONE.

Yea, yea, I is fanboy blah, blah.

MBPro

One day, the pretentious arrogance that permeates everything Apple - no doubt a reflection of the company's bacon-hating chief executive - will spell their doom.

I eagerly await this inevitability with the fervor of a young child on Christmas Eve...Apple's Doom will be the most glorious of gifts.

Awake77

uh, its Adobe. Im sure they'll do it.

Sam6644

@Zakintosh: QuickTime is the devil and perhaps the reason why 95% of PC people don't have a positive view of Apple, so it shouldn't be mentioned under any circumstances.

"Sorry, but you must upgrade to QuickTime X.X2 to view this video".

But, I just upgraded to QuickTime X.X1 yesterday, and installed X.X0 last week. I hate you QuickTime!!!

drewheyman

@seismic007:
Whoa!
"High Horse"?
"Axe to grind"?
Dude, this lack of flash implementation is a serious shortcoming on the iPhone which in most respects shines as a mobile internet device.
I think Adam is well within bounds for the comments and attitude he expresses.
I, on the otherhand, think Apple is a greedy guts, proprietary money machine... how many codecs does iPod/iPhone support... ? (as compared to virtually every other PMP/PDA/Smartphone device)... and why exactly is that?!

ANoel

What the hell is wrong with giving us the lite version until Apple forces Adobe to create a custom "middle" version?

idiots...

axiomatic

Me want flash.

ph15h

@Zenshai: I'll second that!

jetexas

Hah, what a crap... can't they just put flash mobile and then ask for a middle version?

That's why i don't like Apple... Everybody says that Sony wants to push their techonologies to the consumer (wich is true) but I think that apple it's about the same... but hey! Apple has fanboys that accept everything. If one day, for some reason Apple release a touchscreen only notebook everybody will, WOW! Doesn't matter if it's a pain in the ass to use that, it's an Apple they must be right.

Meh!

yasudevil

Forget flash, who the hell needs it? Give me copy and paste and i'll be happy.

Zenshai

@seismic007: Why would he grind his axe somewhere else? This is where he blogs ...

Perhaps you should take your reading and comments somewhere else.

jetexas

BOO! All I wanted added to it was Flash and 3G, is that too much to ask? I thought its supposed to be "the internet on your phone" well guess what, without flash, it aint shit.

graffiksguru

It's the real Internet... without Flash!

LOL!

Sleeper_Service

Adam Frucci, I think you need to hop down off your high horse. It appears Apple has some justifiably sound reasoning behind its omission of Flash from the iPhone.

"Funny, Mobile Flash seems to work OK on all of the other phones that it's installed on. I'm sure we could make do with it on the precious iPhone."

Adam, regarding Flash Lite; this isn't what I've been reading around the web (as well as some of the posts above).

I usually don't get irritated by what I read on Gizmodo. But it really sounds like you've got an axe to grind. Maybe you should be grinding that axe somewhere else?

seismic007

I like mobile Safari the way it is. It disables all the annoying shit on Myspace.

jetexas

Great goin stevey!!....(@sshole!)

nikeplr

typical fanboi responses: an Apple product doesn't support some capability; now that capability doesn't mean anything, it's stupid, it's bloated, it's so un-apple, it's ... oh yeah, it's got a market penetration of 98%.

Good for you apple, cut out that capability and your kool-aid kids will go "Hey! A new feature!"

lianna_g

@Buran: I completely agree... i am so tired of websites being completely built in flash. iPhone or not

onlooker

I'd pick Opera over Safari any day. Too bad there's no Opera for the iPhone yet...

Knirfie

Why would Jobs want to support a technology that allows his customers to obtain videos from someplace OTHER thatn iTunes? Next you're going to be demanding BitTorrent native support! Get Real. Jobs is in it for the money. Wozniak was the idealist. That's why he's now playing Segway Polo.

Skeptical_Geezer

Jobs is posturing. Flash9 runs "ok" on the nokia Internet Tablets (n800 & n810) and they're running 200Mhz slower than the jesus-phone. There is no reason other than politics for them not to bring Flash to the iphone.

phi

Co-Sign Awake77 Steve Jobs is a Nazi Douchebag

CliftonSantiago

Flash FTW

BigDaddyM

Or maybe Steve is (don't want to confuse anyone with a contraction...) just clever enough to let others use the SDK to create a solution that costs Apple nothing, and boosts the visibility of iPhone developers? Win win.

imajoebob

"Hi, I'm Steve Jobs and I double talk a lot to confuse fanboys who think they can predict what my announcements will be."

Honestly people, if anything, comments like this make me think that he's going to announce something like that. Adobe and Mac seem to be working together like PB&J, I wouldn't put it past Steve. As it is, users will need to update to use the SDK programs I assume, so why not include something everyone wants along with it, so they can be hooked in and ready to get these new apps?

And also, wouldn't access to the SDK allow for a flash viewer to be added anyways? (Not really up on the tech in that department)

leadster618

Just like always, apple wants people to change everything just for them. He's probably waiting to release the 3G iphone with flash just to make people upgrade.

gamecrazychris

You know I used to have a Sony Clie Palm device (which I gave to my wife). Anyway, she still uses it and recently the device had to be reset which means I had to do it.

Funny enough, out of the box there's a great Flash Player on it. And this is from 4 years ago!!! Now how did they do it back then and how come Apple nor Palm could do it now. Blows my mind.

contempt

Nice... so no iPhone for me just yet.

If Mobile Flash is too wimpy, then it would not be a problem supporting it, would it?
I mean, wimpy support is always better than NONE.

Lame excuse is lame.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

@lianna_g:
Wish I could improve on that observation, but the truth not only hurts, but it's hard to improve upon.

Out2gtcha

I have friends at adobe who work in the mobile development division. They say the iPhone has no need of flash and feel it runs great the way it is.. the feeling is to keep the thing running stable.

I agree with flash being fun, but it doesn't need to be on the iPhone to make or break decisions to purchase.

sangarts2

Maybe this has been brought up already but I can't imagine trying to load a full flash website on the iPhone with it's amazingly slow Edge connection. I might as well dial the internet up on a 56k modem as search it on the iPhone.

jeepingeek

@lianna_g:

You're so smug. You must be one of those too cool hipsters who sits in the coffee shop pretending to be relevant and failing miserably.

Must be nice using Windblows Mobile or Crackberry.

freakshow1

@JacquesAss:

ROR!!!!

@imajoebob:

Grammar Nazi!

freakshow1

no worries, Im sure Iphone2 will support Flash, and only cost 800.00$!

nopposan

What are these sites that require Flash that everybody here is so eager to visit with the iPhone ? (although I have a feeling that the bulk of the people complaining about the lack of Flash on the iPhone don't even have an iPhone)

I've owned an iPhone for a good 5 months now, and although I'm not a heavy web surfer on the iPhone, I've used my share of Safari on it, and I've yet to come across a website where I was like "Shit, I'm missing crucial content here because I don't have Flash."

The only exception to that was YouTube (when there still was a lot of videos you couldn't find on the iPhone/YouTube application).

So, in conclusion, I agree that for the sake of completion, it would be nice to have some Flash support, I also agree that it's not critical, because I certainly am not missing Flash right now.

Dearhaw

As much as I like Apple, they need to start getting with web standards rather than their own light yet sleek way of working...

@jeepingeek: it works. it won't be fast but if you got no other choice, it works...

VakeroRokero

@jeepingeek: use Wifi or dont go to the site. you cant hinder an entire technology just cos' of a temporary bandwidth dip.

@freakshow1: you're one of those jerks that just waste time insulting total strangers on the internet instead of adding something useful to the discussion.

alukard

We thought the best way was to just go back to a basic webpage and resize RainyDayMagazine just of the iPhone:

[www.rainydaymagazine.com]

Actually, the only speed that works well with the iPhone or iPod Touch is surfing over WiFi. Otherwise it just feels a bit too slow.

RainyDayInterns

Jobs, you are a genius, but a prick

MrBlahBlah

@rainydayinterns: it's from that dreamweaver basic template ... like the raindrops. You bring up a good point ... mobile content is being crafted separately, from the ground up, for a good user experience. Given the real estate, it just makes sense. I'm not a die-hard fan of native internet browsing on a tiny screen. It's nice to have a presentation specifically formatted for your mobile gear.

lianna_g

Yes. We may start completely from scratch. The current resizing was done just to test out some ideas. We hope to have it finalized by the start of Summer 2008.

At this point, we wanted to see which navigation layout would work best. Each pixel on a small screen is valuable. We'll be hacking away at the "white spaces" and borders over the next few weeks...trying out different approaches.

RainyDayInterns

@freakshow1: We have ways of making you punctuate!

Actually, I was just making fun of someone else's cheap shot about its vs. it's.

imajoebob

How said, that most comments look to bash one vendor or another, but I bet most of you are not monochromatic when it comes to vendors' products that you buy. This is shown by the fact that all of you are using products and tools made by dozens of vendors and not just Microsoft, Apple and Sony. So give up the bashing already, and move out of your mom's basement!

NotVendorBought

This annoying little hangup prevents pretty much all video sites from working, save a tiny selection of YouTube videos

You obviously don't have an iPhone. As far as I can tell the conversion of all YouTube video to H264 is complete. I never have a problem accessing any YouTube videos on my iPhone.

NormM

I thank S. Jobs for forcing companies to raise the bar instead of accepting half baked apps. At lease Jobs does not accept mediocrity. This state of being is not acceptable to Apple and we should all be praising Jobs.

nebs123

@frostoy: Fanboy's unite! to get flammed! Flash doesn't seem to be on Steve's list sucks for you guys. ::Goes back to the AT&T TiLT with WM6 to watch more videos in Flash::

ThatsMrOffDutyNinja