Apple working on Adobe Flash support for iPhone

July 6, 2007 By

I just saw this on Digg that Apple is working with Adobe on Flash for the iPhone. Now the timing on this release is funny. Why? Because on Monday morning I’ll be on a bus with a few Adobe executives. Not to mention that tomorrow night the iPhoneDevCamp starts at Adobe. I guess someone in PR figured it’d leak so they might as well tell Walt Mossberg all about it.

Of course astute readers of my blog knew this a couple of weeks ago.

Now what goes with Flash? Games, games, games!!!

Can’t wait for the updates.

I’ll ask Adobe for more details tomorrow night and on Monday.

Filed Under: 1
  • Chris L

    Jump to 47:30 in this video with an Adobe engineer. I think he wanted to confirm that Flash is running on the ARM processor (which is in the iPhone) but he stops short of saying it.
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1156113143758326102

  • Chris L

    Jump to 47:30 in this video with an Adobe engineer. I think he wanted to confirm that Flash is running on the ARM processor (which is in the iPhone) but he stops short of saying it.
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1156113143758326102

  • Zark

    Chris L,

    Well Flash is running on ARM. E.g. Nokia N800 has Flash as well as the N95 (though on the latter it is Flash Lite).

  • Zark

    Chris L,

    Well Flash is running on ARM. E.g. Nokia N800 has Flash as well as the N95 (though on the latter it is Flash Lite).

  • http://www.actercompany.com/ Frank Bascio

    Robert,

    Be sure to ask about support for AIR as well.

    Frank

  • http://www.actercompany.com Frank Bascio

    Robert,

    Be sure to ask about support for AIR as well.

    Frank

  • Siamak

    The key question is which version of Flash. For example, in the case of the Nokia N800, only version 7 is supported, which means that when viewing YouTube videos, you notice that audio and video are not always in sync.

    I hope that the iPhone implementation will support the current version (which is 9, I believe).

  • Siamak

    The key question is which version of Flash. For example, in the case of the Nokia N800, only version 7 is supported, which means that when viewing YouTube videos, you notice that audio and video are not always in sync.

    I hope that the iPhone implementation will support the current version (which is 9, I believe).

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com/ Chris

    Shouldn’t they have made this announcement before they announce the iphone dev camp?

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com Chris

    Shouldn’t they have made this announcement before they announce the iphone dev camp?

  • http://podmedia.hu/ Balazs Fejes

    Siamak, Flash 9 just came out on the Nokia N800 today…

  • http://podmedia.hu Balazs Fejes

    Siamak, Flash 9 just came out on the Nokia N800 today…

  • Siamak

    It looks like Nokia has just updated the firmware for the Nokia N800 so that it now supports Flash 9:

    http://maemo.org/news/view/1183705330.html

  • Siamak

    It looks like Nokia has just updated the firmware for the Nokia N800 so that it now supports Flash 9:

    http://maemo.org/news/view/1183705330.html

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com/ Chris

    “Well Flash is running on ARM. E.g. Nokia N800 has Flash as well as the N95 (though on the latter it is Flash Lite).”
    “It looks like Nokia has just updated the firmware for the Nokia N800 so that it now supports Flash 9:”

    That’s really odd. I bet it’s not the Linux x86 build but that they are actually running the Win Flash 9 build on Wine to compensate for the architecture. I think Wine will build on other archs, and that would provide a nice x86 to ARM bridge right there, with no extra work.

    So much of flash is Assembly code specific to the x86, when they ported the version 9 to Linux with GAS the Penguin.SWF developer was pulling his hair out.

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com Chris

    “Well Flash is running on ARM. E.g. Nokia N800 has Flash as well as the N95 (though on the latter it is Flash Lite).”
    “It looks like Nokia has just updated the firmware for the Nokia N800 so that it now supports Flash 9:”

    That’s really odd. I bet it’s not the Linux x86 build but that they are actually running the Win Flash 9 build on Wine to compensate for the architecture. I think Wine will build on other archs, and that would provide a nice x86 to ARM bridge right there, with no extra work.

    So much of flash is Assembly code specific to the x86, when they ported the version 9 to Linux with GAS the Penguin.SWF developer was pulling his hair out.

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com/ Chris

    http://wiki.jswindle.com/index.php/Installing_Wine#ARM_Building_from_source
    BINGO!
    You could probably run MS Office 2000 and Photoshop on the N800 too if you wanted to. :)

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com Chris

    http://wiki.jswindle.com/index.php/Installing_Wine#ARM_Building_from_source
    BINGO!
    You could probably run MS Office 2000 and Photoshop on the N800 too if you wanted to. :)

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com/ Chris

    NM, wine isn’t emulation, I guess it stays true to the acronym. I hadn’t used it in years and just faq’d. So that means Nokia got the Linux sources and recompiled for ARM. Apple probably will too. There’s closed source for you.

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com Chris

    NM, wine isn’t emulation, I guess it stays true to the acronym. I hadn’t used it in years and just faq’d. So that means Nokia got the Linux sources and recompiled for ARM. Apple probably will too. There’s closed source for you.

  • http://www.techtoolblog.com/ Tim

    Flash is ok, but I’m really hoping for Silverlight.

  • http://www.techtoolblog.com Tim

    Flash is ok, but I’m really hoping for Silverlight.

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    Asking Apple is the best source of info on Apple releases. You can’t “ask Adobe” (or even “ask a person at Adobe”). It’s called “Apple iPhone” for a reason.

    (Due to the lack of retraction in the Mossberg piece after publishing, I’m inclined to suspect that was actually an official Apple statement made by proxy, particularly when coupled with Mossberg’s lack of links to source information. I don’t like when things aren’t clear, however. The reporter did not answer “How do you know what you say you know?”)

    fwiw, Chumby is also running Flash on ARM.

    jd/adobe

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    Asking Apple is the best source of info on Apple releases. You can’t “ask Adobe” (or even “ask a person at Adobe”). It’s called “Apple iPhone” for a reason.

    (Due to the lack of retraction in the Mossberg piece after publishing, I’m inclined to suspect that was actually an official Apple statement made by proxy, particularly when coupled with Mossberg’s lack of links to source information. I don’t like when things aren’t clear, however. The reporter did not answer “How do you know what you say you know?”)

    fwiw, Chumby is also running Flash on ARM.

    jd/adobe

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com/ Chris

    jd,

    http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/

    I do not see any arm builds for Flash player 9.
    Where are they getting these builds?
    Was the Linux flash 9 code leaked?
    Is Nokia and Chumby building from sources configure/make install from the Linux Flash 9 sources???
    Otherwise I don’t see how the x86 inline mnemonics would compile? The only version that would is the Linux version with the GAS ports.

    Why doesn’t adobe just make the Linux port available as source code so developers can target any platform with a make?
    Now Adobe is giving limited builds to Nokia and Apple only?
    This is such BS. We need a new rich media format and now.

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com Chris

    jd,

    http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/

    I do not see any arm builds for Flash player 9.
    Where are they getting these builds?
    Was the Linux flash 9 code leaked?
    Is Nokia and Chumby building from sources configure/make install from the Linux Flash 9 sources???
    Otherwise I don’t see how the x86 inline mnemonics would compile? The only version that would is the Linux version with the GAS ports.

    Why doesn’t adobe just make the Linux port available as source code so developers can target any platform with a make?
    Now Adobe is giving limited builds to Nokia and Apple only?
    This is such BS. We need a new rich media format and now.

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    I don’t know all business deals. I know details that hit the newspapers and can be confirmed by observation, that’s all.

    That downloads page is for consumers on laptops. Nokia and Chumby are among the licensees for inclusion of predictable Adobe technology.

    Giving away Adobe sourcecode would help those who are trying to fracture the SWF file format by distributing varying implementations. (Look at PNG… the W3C’s very first Recommendation, and we’re *still* waiting for all deployed implementations to completely support it.) Sometimes multiple implementations are useful, but the unique value in SWF (and, to a lesser extent, PDF) is in the predictability of its rendering.

    jd/adobe

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    I don’t know all business deals. I know details that hit the newspapers and can be confirmed by observation, that’s all.

    That downloads page is for consumers on laptops. Nokia and Chumby are among the licensees for inclusion of predictable Adobe technology.

    Giving away Adobe sourcecode would help those who are trying to fracture the SWF file format by distributing varying implementations. (Look at PNG… the W3C’s very first Recommendation, and we’re *still* waiting for all deployed implementations to completely support it.) Sometimes multiple implementations are useful, but the unique value in SWF (and, to a lesser extent, PDF) is in the predictability of its rendering.

    jd/adobe

  • Todd Stryke

    Robert,
    I love reading your blog but sometimes you’re either dense or stupid. Adobe currently has nothing to do with flash on the iPhone. It’s an internal project @ Apple and Adobe currently has nothing to do with it. So go ahead and ask as many Adobe employees as you can locate about flash on the iPhone but they will tell you it’s an Apple thing.

  • Todd Stryke

    Robert,
    I love reading your blog but sometimes you’re either dense or stupid. Adobe currently has nothing to do with flash on the iPhone. It’s an internal project @ Apple and Adobe currently has nothing to do with it. So go ahead and ask as many Adobe employees as you can locate about flash on the iPhone but they will tell you it’s an Apple thing.

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com/ Chris

    “Sometimes multiple implementations are useful, but the unique value in SWF”

    Really?
    Adobe can grab the necessary applications here:
    http://www.ansi.org
    and here:
    http://www.iso.org

    That should prevent fragmentation well enough?
    Or is that really the concern?

    That was the reason Sun gave for java too. But in reality, in practice, if you have a Netra or another SPARC server running Ubuntu and you want to run the Sun JVM, too bad. You’re out of luck. Ironically, Sun SPARC machines running Ubuntu HAVE to run Mono or gcj instead.

    Anybody who wants to build their own embedded device, and those who will purchase the http://www.openmoko.org phone on July 9th are completely out of luck then?
    pffffffffttttttttttttt…

    BTW, that downloads page is for all PC hardware platforms, not just laptops.

  • http://www.beercosoftware.com Chris

    “Sometimes multiple implementations are useful, but the unique value in SWF”

    Really?
    Adobe can grab the necessary applications here:
    http://www.ansi.org
    and here:
    http://www.iso.org

    That should prevent fragmentation well enough?
    Or is that really the concern?

    That was the reason Sun gave for java too. But in reality, in practice, if you have a Netra or another SPARC server running Ubuntu and you want to run the Sun JVM, too bad. You’re out of luck. Ironically, Sun SPARC machines running Ubuntu HAVE to run Mono or gcj instead.

    Anybody who wants to build their own embedded device, and those who will purchase the http://www.openmoko.org phone on July 9th are completely out of luck then?
    pffffffffttttttttttttt…

    BTW, that downloads page is for all PC hardware platforms, not just laptops.

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    Todd: how do you know Adobe has nothing to do with the iPhone’s Flash implementation? My sources tell me you’re wrong.

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    Todd: how do you know Adobe has nothing to do with the iPhone’s Flash implementation? My sources tell me you’re wrong.

  • Todd Stryke

    Robert,
    Perhaps you should email Lynch.

  • Todd Stryke

    Robert,
    Perhaps you should email Lynch.

  • http://www.planet-xaml.net/ Florian Krüsch

    No hope for Silverlight, no?? :)

  • http://www.planet-xaml.net Florian Krüsch

    No hope for Silverlight, no?? :)

  • http://tech.kateva.org/ John faughnan

    I found this thread when it occurred to me that Apple would do for .swf what they did for pdf -> create their own viewer.

    It’s the only way to go. Adobe’s OS X software record has been worse than miserable, indeed, their XP record isn’t good either. (My history of Adobe Reader updates has been very bad on XP).

    So I really like Todd’s comments. Makes sense to me.

  • http://tech.kateva.org John faughnan

    I found this thread when it occurred to me that Apple would do for .swf what they did for pdf -> create their own viewer.

    It’s the only way to go. Adobe’s OS X software record has been worse than miserable, indeed, their XP record isn’t good either. (My history of Adobe Reader updates has been very bad on XP).

    So I really like Todd’s comments. Makes sense to me.

  • Tim Miller

    I sure hope my iphone will support flash9. My stock trading service (TRADEKING) is getting ready to implement a new security feature that requires flash9. So there goes my iphone trading during the day. Does anyone know of a stock trading co. that supports the iphone screen?

    Tim Miller
    Bedford, Indiana

  • Tim Miller

    I sure hope my iphone will support flash9. My stock trading service (TRADEKING) is getting ready to implement a new security feature that requires flash9. So there goes my iphone trading during the day. Does anyone know of a stock trading co. that supports the iphone screen?

    Tim Miller
    Bedford, Indiana

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