Adobe’s Flash Not Good Enough for Steve Jobs

Wednesday morning CNN reported that Steve Jobs has come out saying that Adobe’s Flash technology simply isn’t suitable for the iPhone.

Jobs believes that the desktop version of Flash runs too slowly on the iPhone, the cellphone version of Flash isn’t functional enough, and “there’s this missing product in the middle” that would presumably run fast enough for the iPhone while retaining enough functionality.

Adobe doesn’t appear to have any plans for this so-called “product in the middle” so his remarks suggest that iPhone won’t support Flash anytime soon. This is not going to make developers or consumers happy given how important Flash has become for the web, whether it be for delivering rich applications or video.

Those who were hoping that Flash support would be announced with the SDK tomorrow will be especially disappointed. Perhaps Jobs was trying to soften the blow a little bit by announcing his Flash intentions a day early.

Of course, as Duncan speculates, this provides an opportunity for Microsoft to swoop in and enable the iPhone with Silverlight. But is that even imaginable?

Comments

[User 161462:]

This is not bad news there is always room to grow and Adobe has done a great job with Flex/Flash and Air. Adobe Flash is cool and so is the IPhone; I see them working together in the near future. There are a lot of creative and innovative people on the Adobe camp too much to miss. I've already seen examples of IPhone simulators in Adobe AIR. Not every developer wants to code in Objective C! Not that it's not a nice development "box". With Flex/Flash and AIR you can think outside of the box! I'm waiting for Flash Lite for the IPhone! :-) Best, MC

2008 Mar 07 10:58 AM