This (iPhone safari) was Apple's way of saying to the online world that Flash is done...it needs to go.
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Flash Plug-in For iPhone Coming Soon?
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This (iPhone safari) was Apple's way of saying to the online world that Flash is done...it needs to go.
Anyone who says that Edge is not fast enough to handle Flash knows nothing about SWF. SWF is one of the most optimised file formats known to man. Go look up the specs and see how tightly vector graphics are packed - it's insane. Pretty much everything is packed bitwise, co-ordinates included, so all the opcodes required to draw a square total about eight bytes or so. (I've handcoded SWFs without using the commercial Flash authoring system, it's kind of fun. Usually i use Ming, the truly awesome open-source SWF-generation library.)
Video takes up bandwidth, sure. But there's a lot more to SWF than video.
A useful website that requires Flash? Here's one I've done: the online map editor for www.openstreetmap.org (kind of like the Wikipedia of map data; you need to register to be able to use the editing function). About 2000 lines of open-source ActionScript. ActionScript's drawing API makes it a breeze to code and you're guaranteed it works the same on all systems.
As for "AJAX is a movement based on web standards" - well, maybe, but AJAX is also based on a feature (XMLHttpRequest) developed by Microsoft for Outlook Web Access. It's pretty cool, sure, but I don't think it's got many more "standards" brownie points than SWF - which is an open, published file format, albeit one where most future development is controlled by Adobe.
After all that, I would say: don't get your hopes up too high for Flash on iPhone. I mean, I really hope it comes and I hope Apple are developing it, but remember that Adobe still haven't managed to ship a 64-bit version of Flash Player... and porting it to ARM is a whole load more complex than that.
Video takes up bandwidth, sure. But there's a lot more to SWF than video.
A useful website that requires Flash? Here's one I've done: the online map editor for www.openstreetmap.org (kind of like the Wikipedia of map data; you need to register to be able to use the editing function). About 2000 lines of open-source ActionScript. ActionScript's drawing API makes it a breeze to code and you're guaranteed it works the same on all systems.
As for "AJAX is a movement based on web standards" - well, maybe, but AJAX is also based on a feature (XMLHttpRequest) developed by Microsoft for Outlook Web Access. It's pretty cool, sure, but I don't think it's got many more "standards" brownie points than SWF - which is an open, published file format, albeit one where most future development is controlled by Adobe.
After all that, I would say: don't get your hopes up too high for Flash on iPhone. I mean, I really hope it comes and I hope Apple are developing it, but remember that Adobe still haven't managed to ship a 64-bit version of Flash Player... and porting it to ARM is a whole load more complex than that.
As a designer and Flash Developer I agree 100% with your comments. However I think the main reason Flash might not appear on the iPhone anytime soon is that the iPhone processor just isn't powerful enough to play back the kinds of things that have been developed for the web, when developers have had Flash 7,8, or 9 in mind. I think people who develop Flash websites and applications with mobile devices in mind really tone down the transitions and things that would cause the player to choke.
I played with the iPhone for about half an hour today in the apple store. Javascript performance is really not that impressive. For example, go to apple.com/mac and click on some of the accordion type javascript animations -- they barely work on the iPhone while going lightning fast on safari on Tiger. Not a scientific benchmark but I'm very skeptical. Plus you click on a quicktime movie in the page and safari transitions into the iPhone native video player instead of playing right in the page. Presumably to use the hardware based acceleration and codec.
A flash plugin could show eventually but it probably won't be until next year if at all. I hope I'm wrong though.
My guess is the lack of flash comes down to timing. Flash players for portable devices are traditionally one version of flash behind the desktop version. Flash recently upgraded to version 9 on the content creation side, even though the flash 9 player has been out for desktop machines for quite a while. The best embed flash players are still stuck in Flash 7 land, including the player for windows mobile (which by the way is a fellow, albeit less elegant, ARM device). My guess is instead of working to port the old plug-in, the decision was made to work on the new one, and it just simply is not ready yet.
Also, the switch from Flash 8 to Flash 9 was almost entirely a performance optimization instead of a feature increase. As such, Adobe has been making great strides in the efficiency of their code, which should translate into better battery life if those optimizations make it to the iPhone flash player.
Flash would be ideal for the relatively slow edge network environment and would be an excellent platform to create iPhone specific content.
Also, the switch from Flash 8 to Flash 9 was almost entirely a performance optimization instead of a feature increase. As such, Adobe has been making great strides in the efficiency of their code, which should translate into better battery life if those optimizations make it to the iPhone flash player.
Flash would be ideal for the relatively slow edge network environment and would be an excellent platform to create iPhone specific content.
Sorry for the animosity, dude. I was probably in a foul mood and I was put off by your insistence that Flash is a deal-breaker for the iPhone for 98% of users. I too want the iPhone to succeed, but I don't think lack of Flash support is going to keep it from succeeding. Regardless, if adding Flash is a step Apple takes in order to ensure that success, I for one hope that they take it one step further, by allowing users to disable Flash.
And yes, I get your semantic point that without Flash it's not the REAL internet. I just don't care. And I doubt 98% (or some significant majority) of iPhone buyers will care either. What they WILL care about is websites being slower to respond on their iPhone than they already are. Unless Adobe or Apple makes a considered effort to optimize and improve the Flash player, I think they've made the right decision to leave it off the iPhone.
Lastly, for the record, I'm a huge Apple fanboy. Anyone who spends time commenting on the MacRumors forums must face that reality. : )
No hard feelings, mang.