Adobe points at Apple for lack of Flash on iPhone

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the circle of sniping over Flash on the iPhone has begun anew. This time, the ball’s being launched at high velocity from Adobe’s side of the court; as Gear Diary noticed, the company has posted a passive-agressive note on the iPhone version of its Flash download page.

Previously, when you visited the Flash plug-in download page on the iPhone, it would inform you that no version was available for the platform you were viewing on. Instead, it now reads:

"Apple restricts use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod touch."

We cannot imagine how much restraint it must have taken Adobe not to add a “Boo yah!” at the end of that.

We all know that you can’t view Flash content on your iPhone, for for reasons that are open to debate - true, it does violate Apple’s iPhone SDK ban on interpreted languages, but Flash also runs poorly in general on OS X, and we all know that Apple’s a stickler for good performance. And that’s just the technical reasons: you could easily add a few political ones to the mix.

Adobe made an end-run around Apple last month, when it announced that forthcoming Flash CS5 Professional allow developers to write applications in Flash that are then compiled to run on the iPhone. It remains to be seen how, or indeed if, Apple will respond though my guess is the company is banking on users being underwhelmed by the offerings that Flash programmers will produce.

As for whether Flash will ever officially make its to the iPhone, well, I wouldn’t hold your breath, Adobe. I’d guess Apple has no plans to cave before our sun goes dim in the sky above. But when all you’ve got is rocks, I suppose you might as well throw ‘em.

[via Endgadget]

Note: This blog first appeared on our sister site Macworld.com

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Comments received

Diz66 said on Thursday, 05 November 2009

Another example of Apple's analy retentive attitude to life. Good on Adobe for pointing the finger. I'm fed up with Apple's inaction to help us iPhone users that want to have browsing that works on any and every site.

JennyD said on Friday, 06 November 2009

I'm a lifelong Apple fan - I even used one of the first LISA's (the predecessor to the Mac) but this issue could be the one that finally kills my loyalty. It's high time Apple realised that ADOBE is a de-facto web standard - and you can't claim to have a "breakthrough" internet device which doesn't support an important net standard. It time Apple stopped behaving like a spoilt five year old brat in the playground!

Ben said on Saturday, 07 November 2009

I would feel inclined to agree that Apple is solely to blame were it not for Adobes lax attitude towards mac support. Use Youtube or anything that requires flash and the CPU usage goes through the roof, the fan spins up to full speed and theres nothing you can do about it. I have no problem with anything being a "de-facto" web standard, just so long as it works. And until they get it right for OS X, I certainly dont want it anywhere near my iPhone.