Apple and Adobe butting heads?

Thu, 02/21/2008 - 10:35 — Seth Weintraub

The Wall Street Journal is postulating on a behind the scenes Apple - Adobe skirmish about putting Flash in the iPhone.  I think the argument can be summed up with a sentence:

Who will control video on the mobile web?

Need evidence?  If Apple were planning on releasing Flash on the iPhone, why would Youtube be converting their library to H.264?  Yes, the Quicktime quality is better - but not that much better than Flash on a 480x320 inch screen.  What is more important is that every Youtube video put on the web is effectively a interface for a Flash interfaced mobile video platform.

Furthermore, (although likely a red herring) even the lighter versions of Flash tax the processor and by extention the battery life of a device - which provide a convenient excuse for Apple to say it wants to stay off of Flash.

Also, a big part of iTunes movie rentals is moving the data to the iPhone/iPod touch.  At some point in the near future, the Mobile iTunes store will likely have the ability to buy TV shows and movies.  Cool!  But less cool if those things are also availble on the web in Flash players.  For instance, TV shows like Lost.

The Journal speculates that Apple might be working on its own player. 

Frankly, Quicktime is already is the player and playing content from it is already being done.  It can even play flat SWF files.

I think Apple is purposely delaying the release of the Flash in much the same way that they are delaying iChat.  Business reasons rather than technology.

Will Flash ever happen on the iPhone/iPod touch?  Perhaps, and maybe it will happen in the coming weeks...but Apple will certainly be aprehensive about it. 

Mr. Daring Fireball, John Gruber postulates more..

 

Comments

Why would YouTube convert to

Why would YouTube convert to H.264? Because the latest version of Flash supports it, it is not proprietary (previous Flash codec was owned by On2), and the quality is better. The Flash platform still owns online video as the control interfaces are far more extensible.

"If Apple was planning on

"If Apple was planning on releasing Flash on the iPhone..."

you mean... "If Apple were planning on releasing Flash on the iPhone"

Yeah...if you are in Great

Yeah...if you are in Great Britian...in the US Corporate entities are considered singular.

It's the subjunctive mood

It's the subjunctive mood (look it up) in GB and the US.

You're wrong - it's not

You're wrong - it's not about single / plural. It's the subjunctive tense. Look it up if you're not familiar. High school grammar all over again!

How about you're both

How about you're both overlooking the obvious "it's" rather than "its."  Moral of the story?  My favorite Apple site needs an editor.

Hail Grammar Nazi!

Hail Grammar Nazi!

my wife said you were right

my wife said you were right and made me change it

 Flash would introduce many

 Flash would introduce many possible security vulnerabilities into the closed iPhone platform.  There would be potential for malicious code -  code that would have access to a cellular network. 

 Flash developers also love to make creative interfaces, and while they are often attractive and innovative, they would not work well on iPhone.

Have you lost your marbles?

Have you lost your marbles? Do you want to download 1.5 Gb rentals on your iPhone at a hotspot? I don't and I'm willing to bet many more don't. That's too much data to pump through the device at a sitting. All that wifi activity plus writting to disk while running on battery, no thanks.

 

Just want to point out this: http://www.9to5mac.com/apple-itunes-breaks-internet-45326347 where you said  Apple would have trouble with all the bandwidth of rentals and HD rentals. Me thinks you're a bit off the mark... again.

I read an article recently

I read an article recently about Starbucks hiding servers in their stores with wireless hubs that work at "n" speeds. The person suggested that "n" iPhones could download massive movies in mere minutes were this the case. He speculated that it'll be part of an announcement in the next several months along with iPhone 2.0.

TV downloads are usually

TV downloads are usually less than 200mb.  Not a problem.

the iTunes breaking the Internet was a story on how everything gets blown out of proportion - that might have been lost on some people...

Flash video and quicktime

Flash video and quicktime are just wrappers, so there can't be any quality btween them. Quality comes from proper use of good codec and both can use h.264, so they can be as good as the other.

Flash is a huge CPU pig, a

Flash is a huge CPU pig, a memory pig, and a security vulnerability.

It's primary use is to deliver advertisements.

Although it does have good uses, it is currently a big negative for handheld devices. At the end of the day: Flash replaced Java applet technology, but many serious shortcomings found in Java applet technology still remain in Flash.

Apple: Just say "no" to flash. I don't need more talking, animated ads on my resource-limited handheld.

Keep in mind the new HTML

Keep in mind the new HTML

Sorry, I did not quote the

Sorry, I did not quote the tag names <video> and <audio> in my previous message

Maybe they are converting

Maybe they are converting the library for use with the Apple TV and other set top boxes. Those shitty flash clips look prettty damn crap full screen on a HD TV.

I think that if they put a

I think that if they put a full featured Flash player on the iPhone, it would have loads of problems, like what if you wanted to play a game where you use the mouse and keys from the keyboard! You couldn't really do that on the iPhone could you...

So the problem here is that they can't decide what kind of Flash they want to create for the iPhone and they can't agree for some reason, and Steve wants the iPhone to be *perfect* so he doesn't want a shorter battery life because of Flash, he doesn't want Flash interfaces that would not work on the iPhone because of problems like mouse hover and keyboard input and stuff like that... But since everyone wants Flash on the iPhone, I guess sooner or later they will come up with some solution, but since they created a separate App for YouTube, they already knew that they won't have Flash for a long time!

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