Many consumers are surprised that the iPhone still has no internet-video player. Adobe has a tight grip on this technology on mobile devices and it’s unbelievable that Apple and Adobe still haven’t reached an agreement. “Why?” is a reasonable question to ask. Unfortunately, it appears that the only man with an answer to that question is Steve Jobs himself. When asked, no other spokesperson or employee of Apple could answer the question.
Luckily, with the release of the SDK prone to come by the end of February, many sources believe that Adobe will be able to develop the flash player at that time. But the question still stands, why has Steve Job’s been delaying the process? Is there some underlying issue here? Unfortunately, with no official statements being made, us bloggers are left to be the ones to speculate. With so little sources, even the author of the article quotes Andru Edwards over at the Gear Live blog.
My opinion? Apple has something in the works, most probably a video player of their own creation. This would be quite the feat because almost all videos online are flash-based. This would also be a surprising move because Apple and Adobe have a history of a strong relationship, caused by both of their products driving the sales of the other so solidly. Really, all we can do is speculate and wait to see what happens.
[Source: The Wall Street Journal 02/21/08 P. B3]
written by Simone Renee \\ tags: Adobe, Apple, iPhone, iPhone SDK
February 25th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Your opinion sounds like the most likely thought which fits the facts.
I’m betting that somewhere Apple has a new Quicktime in the works. And one of its features will be playing both Quicktime h264 files and Adobe h264 files.
Perhaps Apple wants to make a bigger play. 10 years ago they had the only interactive video system around - and it was never really developed further. Pity.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Flash is not on the iPhone because of a combination of technical limitations and UI challenges… they’ve been trying to make it work forever, but unless its performance is desktop-class and near-flawless, SJ won’t let it out!
February 26th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Flash is a resource hog and a security risk. Flash is also proprietary, NOT a standard, and not open source for the reader.
Of course, Apple wouldn’t let Adobe develop flash on the iPhone because there is no official SDK yet. Adobe is a third party developer.
The iPhone is for REAL internet browsing on a handheld device. Flash light would not work, it has to be full flash. Yet full flash is a resource hog and full of bugs and security problems. Plus, it has a proprietary DRM which Adobe is not releasing to anyone.
Why should Apple use Flash - unless it OWNED the source code and Flash was open-sourced and GPL’d so that Adobe can’t hog it like Microsoft does Office.
Apple was able to convince Google - which owns YouTube - to switch to the MPEG-4 Format for internet videos. Thus many other sites should consider using MPEG-4 - which is a standard worldwide for videos.
Another thing - Flash leaves it’s own brand of cookies which cannot be removed by the browser. You have to go to Adobe’s website to remove them.
We shall see if Flash makes it on the iPhone. If anything, if Adobe makes the iPhone plug-in and it SUCKS, then Adobe is to blame, not Apple.
What I would like to see is Apple to purchase Adobe and take over Flash development - making it part of Quicktime - then taking over the web. After all, Apple has $18 billion in cash, and Adobe is worth about $4 Billion only.