Apple bans Flash from iPhone and iPad

I was listening to a Radio Four broadcast the other day where Stephen Fry mentioned how he and Douglas Adams had two of the very first Apple Macs in the UK and, back in nineteen eighty something, designed their own icons for the desktop. That made me sit up.

Just think - the stuff you could do on ancient Apple Macs is impossible to do 25 years later on your (non jailbroken) iPhone, because Apple doesn't approve.

Hooray for progress. Hooray for non-conformity.

By Noghar on 9 Apr 2010

Long term this could really harm the iPhone. Whether Apple like it or not Flash is a major element of modern webpages, especially video.

If they persist in their stupid ban then ultimately people will abandon the iPhone for competing phones that let their OWNERS decide what can be installed on it.

By omnisvalidus on 9 Apr 2010

i doubt it will harm iphone sales and if i we're mr jobs i wouldn't be too concerned losing customers. Another report i read on the BBC page regarding the iPads stated that 50m iphones had been sold. 50m! and not one of them has flash installed (other than jail broken of course and i bet there are a tiny fraction of those around).

Flash is great but can be a huge bandwidth hog. This is probably why Apple won't allow it on the iphone, it would seriously disrupt the online experiance...

By richb330 on 9 Apr 2010

@Noghar
And that's why I think Stephen Fry is a bit of a prat when it come to IT matters. One minute he's doing a video for GNU and free software etc, the next he's walking talking ambassador/salesman for all things Apple, which as a company make MS look positively warm and cuddly!

By rjp2000 on 9 Apr 2010

I hope Adobe fight back!

I'm hoping Adobe start fighting back and stop supporting CS5 on the Mac.

By jagdipa on 9 Apr 2010

Jobs: Amazing burner of bridges

When Sculley, Spindler and Amelio ran Apple, it was Adobe who helped the ailing company through its darkest time. Graphics and Music Studios kept it in business. He'd better watch who he throws under the bus, because the sun won't always be shining on Apple.

By Alperian on 9 Apr 2010

Flash is the key to another world .. one not controlled by Apple

If Flash is available, so are free Flash games on the internet, and so many other applications and then Apple App Store is not such a convincing plus point, and is no longer the gate keeper .. or should that be the gatherer of the Apple usage tax?

By redgar3 on 9 Apr 2010

Flash is the key to another world .. one not controlled by Apple

If Flash is available, so are free Flash games on the internet, and so many other applications and then Apple App Store is not such a convincing plus point, and is no longer the gate keeper .. or should that be the gatherer of the Apple usage tax?

By redgar3 on 9 Apr 2010

@richb330

Do you not actually think that the real reason for Aplle (Jobs) not wanting it is more likely because of all the games and other things that can be created with it thus cutting into Apple revenue streams.

By Embattled on 9 Apr 2010

In the interests of balance and fairness, I look forward to the EU investigating and fining them for such anti competitioove behaviour. They have pursued Microsoft doggedly for years and fined them considerable sums for far less questionable practices.

By mpdouglas on 9 Apr 2010

Time for photoshop for linux

Time for photoshop for linux and droppinu apple from the line up

By sandman652001 on 9 Apr 2010

iDiots continue making mistakes

I know Adobe can be a pain, but flash is fun and widely used as its easy to work with, its well grounded, needs some tinkering to help it on new platforms - but this is a big mistake by jobs, he certainly knows flash will eat into his company's profits. No doubt about it, more people will be looking to sell second hand iDiot devices after a few months possibly only weeks of owning them.
Aple has been behaving completely awkwardly this last several months, being pursued by various companies to court, with no guarantee of winning - it more than likely is looking to stab itself in the foot - What next?

By nicomo on 9 Apr 2010

I said that Apple want to kill fl;sh

On another threat I suggested that Apple wants to kill flash. I think that is the case.

With HTML5 I figure it will be possible to do it.

Flash is an interim technology that has drawbacks and this move is going to start shifting it into a backwater.

By kaneclem on 9 Apr 2010

@Embattled

I don't think so. I haven't seen any flash based application that performs as good as a local app on the iphone. Flash is good, but not that good.

I put it back to you, do you think Jobs would be concerned about flash applications hurting app store revenues, or do you think it more likely that given the current 3g availability and poor bandwidth he would be more concerned about device performance. 50m iphones sold is an awful lot and until any other company can pull off a better device (which is unlikely anytime soon) I suspect he would be more interested in shifting iphone units..

Flash apps would probably sell but i seriously doubt they would challenge the app store.

By richb330 on 9 Apr 2010

I think you guys are missing the point

This isn't about apps running in the Flash Player, which Jobs has always argued is a resource hog.

This is about which languages you are allowed to use to program Native iPhone OS Applications, which are then sent for approval for sale in the App Store.

This is obviously aimed at Adobe's announcement of their new authoring software Flash Professional CS5, which they have already announced will have the ability to compile native iPhone applications from Actionscript code.


There are other casualties as well including Appcelerator Titanium which compiles HTML, CSS and Javascript to iPhone and Android and Unity3D which compiles iPhone games.

Just seen an article that argues that Apple wants to stop the creation of a 'meta' platform on top of iPhone, Android, Flash Player etc etc...

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_change
d_section_331

I love Apple's products but as a developer I'm worried about these battle lines that are being drawn up between these corporations.

By CSprout on 9 Apr 2010

It's about making things work - simply

When Steve Jobs launched the phone he made it clear a lot of his motivation was just to have a smart phone that was easy to use, and didn't crash. They analysed all the phones then available and left out the things that reduced the user experience.

On the standard OS X platform Apple notified Adobe of 415 code bugs, but to date only 25 have been fixed and there are loads of security holes in it.

Put these two things together, plus the fact that many, many users dislike Flash intensely anyway (except of course highly paid Flash coders), plus HTML5 and YouTube offering content for iPhone without needing Flash and Flash begins to look more and more like a waste of space. I block it on my normal browser anyway!

By SwissMac on 9 Apr 2010

Not That Worried...

I’m not that worried. I have already invented a transcoder from Actionscript 3.0 to Objective-C.

Its called India.

Haha. To hear my real thoughts on the subject and voice your own, checkout the blog; http://www.blog.rivello.org/no-flash-on-iphone-eve
r

By srivello on 10 Apr 2010

Other good smartphones...

there are plenty of other smartphones out there, this is just another reason not to choose an iPhone. Have to feel sorry for the developers though, they, along with the iPhone users, are the ones who inevitably suffer.

By georgeb2009 on 10 Apr 2010

srivello

Your transcoder will violate Apple's terms -
“applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++ or JavaScript”.

By CSprout on 10 Apr 2010

@richb330

Please stop trying to use some bandwidth theory, it just doesn't matter to Apple since they've no control over providers in terms of bandwidth/regions etc and this is even more so with the iPhone now on so many different providers networks. Apple products sell no matter what since they are a company that lays golden eggs.

It is about pure control nothing else, Apple (Jobs) want to dictate how you use your goods from the start to the end and these changes are just more reinforcement of that...it is our way or the highway.

Adobe have needed to pull their finger out for a long while and without doubt flash can be totally horrible at times but I'm in very little doubt as to Apples reasons, although the excuses fit better with the public.

By Embattled on 11 Apr 2010

@SwissMac I know that you defend every little thing about Apple so this will fall on deaf ears but this has nothing to do with Flash. It's about what language is used. It gets compiled into another language that the iPhone understands so this is purely about limiting the software used to create apps. Apple already looks at every app before it is allowed in the app store anyway so it is not about the quality. A bad app can be written in C(in fact worse apps sometimes because of memory leaks) as well as Flash so this has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with calling the shots. They can get away with it however as people like you will defend every awful decision.

By TimoGunt on 11 Apr 2010

"They analysed all the phones then available and left out the things that reduced the user experience." Like Cut & Paste....

By jamesyld on 11 Apr 2010

voting with feet

Gavin bans iPad and iPhone from his life, gets on with his life with a Thinkpad and an HTC Desire.

By gavmeister on 12 Apr 2010

Gonna repeat this.

This isn't about how crappy Flash is in your web browser. This is about first creating an application in Flash and then compiling it into code for whatever platform it is supposed to run on. It won't be Flash after it is compiled.

Steve Jobs has given his reasons, those being that Apple doesn't want a third party controlling developer platforms for his product. More than likely there are other reasons that he hasn't stated e.g. making porting iPhone apps to other platforms harder to do and therefore likely more exclusives on the app store.

By windywoo on 12 Apr 2010