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Adobe to bring Flash to iPhone despite Steve Jobs

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

March 19, 2008, 4:10 PM

Despite a heated exchange with Apple, Adobe seems to be pressing forward with plans to bring Flash to the iPhone.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs started the battle in the media with comments to investors at a shareholders' meeting earlier this month. Essentially, his position was that the current version of Flash for mobile phones is not good enough for the device, and the standard version runs too slowly.

In response, Adobe shot back that the iPhone was crippled without support for the increasingly pervasive multimedia Web format. It also argued that Apple had virtually left it in the dark about how exactly the two companies could work together to make Flash a reality.

Some industry insiders pointed out that without Apple's help, building Flash for the iPhone and iPod Touch will be a laborious task.

Essentially, the technology needs to be rebuilt from the ground up to take into consideration the differences between Flash in a desktop environment and in the quasi-mobile OS that Apple uses -- especially with gestures as the method of navigation on the device.

That doesn't seem to be stopping Adobe. Developers at the company have gotten a copy of the iPhone SDK and say that after looking through it, it should be possible for a Flash player to be built and then offered through the App Store system that will house iPhone applications.

Even without the iPhone, Flash Lite, the current system to bring the technology to mobile phones is doing quite well. Adobe reported that 100 million Flash Light-equipped phones shipped in the company's first quarter.

It also received additional support from Microsoft, which agreed to include the technology in Windows Mobile.

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By sumone

posted Mar 20, 2008 - 4:52 AM

Btw, its Flash Lite not Flash Light. Sounds like Silverlight.

Score: 0

By markrw

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 9:22 PM

Actually numpty guitar poof - Adobe is retarded...

worst products ever...

they make micros***e look good...

the web and for that matter the office would be a lot place if we didnt have to deal with the resource hogging s***e that are adobe products...

for ****s sake - their facking viewer uses more resources than most apps...

its only moronic web developer egomaniacs that think we only want to look at pretty pictures that this rubbish is actually used in the ****ing first place...

thank god for firefox and its plugins that allow us too turn all this s*** off...

Score: 0

By lfmmoura

posted Mar 20, 2008 - 3:37 PM

I have always wondered why third-party PDF readers (such as Foxit) use dozens of megabytes less resources than Adobe's native ones.

I used to like Adobe. But they have really given a new concept to the word 'bloatware.'

Score: 0

By uberfly

posted Mar 20, 2008 - 2:53 AM

Too funny. Sad, but funny.

Score: 0

By Setian^Stalker

edited Mar 20, 2008 - 12:29 AM

Is that a joke? You must be seriously disillusioned to even think that.
They are industry standards on several fronts because their products are the worst ever?
I recommend you have a serious look at your computer because their applications have been improving in the resource department considerably for a few years now.

That is the worst attempt to defend apple to date…. And oh I used the Post a reply button!!

Score: 0

By guitarplayer9999

edited Mar 19, 2008 - 6:09 PM

apple is retarded....what more is there to say?

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Mar 20, 2008 - 9:45 AM

No its Steve Jobs who is.

Score: 0

By hypermark

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 5:21 PM

Personally, this is a great test of the control v. (developer) community dynamics that will continue to play out as Apple tries to build a mainstream platform; namely, secure developer ecosystem love while maintaining the high performance bar that they have established with the iPhone/iPod touch family of devices.

In that respect, it is somewhat of a three dimensional chess game unfolding, something I blogged about in, ‘The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK.’

Check it out if interested:

http://thenetworkgarden....03/the-scorpion-th.html

Cheers,

Mark

Score: 0

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