Flash on the iPhone?

[MacRumors]

A screenshot posted to Flickr points out that one portion of the New York Times website shown during the most recent iPhone ad correctly renders a Flash-based video.

Apple has not yet confirmed whether or not the iPhone's browser will support flash. This is not definitive proof that the iPhone supports Flash, however, as the screens could have been fabricated for the purposes of the advertisement.

[Zwhaler]

If the iPhone has "the internet" it would not surprise me if it had Flash, becasue there are many websites out there that require it.

[TomSmithMacEd]

This would be really big.

The myspace generation.... youtube (flash video)... on your phone.

Great for Apple, probably bad for society (ha)

[Chaszmyr]

I think we all knew that flash would be coming eventually if it was at all possible (Which it should be if they try hard enough), but it is awesome that it looks like it will be available at launch.

[kingtubby]

Safari will ship with flash. The commecial was an actual video. And they would never ship "just the internet" without Flash.

[From Win to Mac]

This isn't a rumor... When the iPhone was released, Steve said so himself:

Flash YES
Java NO

I'll look for it.

[kainjow]

Screw Flash. I want Silverlight.

[jwa276]

SWEEEEEET

please excuse my caps

[Clive At Five]

Who would notice that?

And to add a relevant comment, I would be shocked if the iPhone did not support Flash.

-Clive

[arn]

Originally Posted by From Win to Mac

This isn't a rumor... When the iPhone was released, Steve said so himself:

Flash YES
Java NO

I'll look for it.

There's some controversy

But see this FAQ from Pogue
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/...s-list-part-2/

Markoff: “What about all those plugins that live within Safari now, like Flash or like Java or like JavaScript?”

Jobs: “Well, JavaScript’s built into the Phone. Sure.”

Markoff: “And what are you thinking about Flash and Java?”

Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”

Markoff: “Flash?”

Jobs: “Well, you might see that.”

Markoff: “What about YouTube–”

Jobs: “Yeah, YouTube—of course. But you don’t need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get ‘em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec.”

[nagromme]

FWIW, those video controls do not look like the actual video controls on the site.

I'd say it might be an alt image with dummy controls, created by NY Times rather than Apple, but I see no alt image when I disable plugins.

The iPhone version also lacks the ads in the top corners. Maybe just a mockup page made for the ad?

[holamiamigos]

youtube on the go.. woo!

[fco.xavier]

Look at the video controls that appear on the Ad and the ones that appear on the NYtimes webpage right now...

Strange huh?

Screenshot from the Ad:


Screenshot from nytimes.com


Makes the Ad look kinda fake...

[cannonball]

I was under the impression that we would not get Flash (at least at the onset). Everytime I see an iPhone ad bragging the "full" internet, I cringe, thinking, "Not without Flash!!"

I really hope this is true.

[nagromme]

Well, Apple.com - including the iPhone pages - relies on Flash heavily!

On the other hand, wouldn't getting a full, modern, compatible Flash player (better than the old QuickTime support) running in a new OS X on a new processor architecture (ARM?) require significant support from Adobe? And wouldn't that endeavor need to have begun some time ago? In which case, if a Flash plugin has been in the works with Adobe and Apple, why would Steve Jobs suggest it may not happen?

Maybe it's a feature that won't be ready in time but will come later?

[bretm]

Originally Posted by nagromme

Well, Apple.com - including the iPhone pages - relies on Flash heavily!

Actually, no. Everything you think is flash, is interactive QT. Apple does not use flash anywhere on it's website. Why would it? They have a competing technology called "QuickTime."

Try to find a flash element on Apple's website. I can't find one.

[nagromme]

Originally Posted by bretm

Actually, no. Everything you think is flash, is interactive QT. Apple does not use flash anywhere on it's website. Why would it? They have a competing technology called "QuickTime."

Try to find a flash element on Apple's website. I can't find one.

Good call--I can't either (right-click anything to check). The reason they might use Flash is the authoring tools and vector animation (which QuickTime itself supports to a limited extent). I thought they must be using Flash for multi-mode pages like the iPhone and the multiple iPod colors. But they don't seem to be.

I consider that another nail in the coffin of Flash being on the iPhone at launch.

[Yixian]

I never even considered the possibility that Apple would make such a moronic decision as to leave out Flash support.

[jonharris200]

Surely they will have to incorporate Flash support - if not at launch, soon after. Flash has 98% or so penetration on desktops and notebooks. That is a reason why web designers and developers use it so much. It would be crazy not to support all the sites out there with Flash on them.

[nagromme]

Agreed. It will come. Long before I get mine, probably

And Steve's odd statements may not mean it isn't coming at launch, just that he wasn't sure enough to say so. There's hope It's all guesses.

[dago]

It's a mockup in any case.

Notice that at the beginning the date is set to "Sunday, Jun 3"
while the NYT pages are dated "Monday, 02 October 2006".

[Stella]

"Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”"

Maybe not for the internet, but its the most used language for 3rd party software on cell phones, and some of the softwware is pretty good too ( re: games ).

!iPhone.contains(Java).equals("Big Mistake")

Mobile Java is pretty secure too... so there's no excuse for 3rd party and iPhone security.

[shipdestroyer]

Flash would allow for so many games.

[McCarron]

Flash wouldn't be hard to do on the iPhone because it runs OS X. It's just getting agreements with Adobe to ship it with the device. Since Apple has that already with the Macs, I don't see why they wouldn't do it with the iPhone.

In that case, Java would be possible too but I bet they stripped that out for space.

[bdj21ya]

Originally Posted by Stella

"Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”"

Maybe not for the internet, but its the most used language for 3rd party software on cell phones, and some of the softwware is pretty good too ( re: games ).

!iPhone.contains(Java).equals("Big Mistake")

Mobile Java is pretty secure too... so there's no excuse for 3rd party and iPhone security.

I have some bad news for you. Your boolean statement above tries to compare the boolean result of .contains(Java) with the String "Big Mistake", which is going to throw an Exception at compile time. Also, the ! expression would be resolved last, after the rest of it. Try this code for better results:

if(!iPhone.contains(Java)) System.out.println("Big Mistake");

As you can probably guess, the main reason I would love for it to do java is because it's the language I've the most experience in and I would love to be able to develop for my iPhone (after someone else develops a hack to let me load software on without Steve's approval. However, I really doubt it will support it, since Steve said no, and I'll enjoy learning to develop what I want as widgets anyway.