14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe's Chief Executive, Shantanu Narayen, has recently been quoted as saying that having downloaded the iPhone SDK, the company can confirm the upcoming availability of a Flash Player for the iPhone, which is to be distributed through the iTunes App store. The App Store is an exclusive iPhone 2.0 software feature to become available in June.
The latest CNN reports say that Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, isn't very happy with Adobe's flash tech, as far as his iPhone is concerned. Why? Because, as he reckons, it slows the iPhone down dramatically. Jobs suggests a "middle" solution, which Adobe, in turn, (seemingly) wasn't willing to release.
Which left a huge gap open for the iPhone. As most of you probably know, these days, the web offers tons of flash-based content, and for Apple to skip it is unimaginable. "Jobs believes that the desktop version of Flash runs too slowly on the iPhone," reads a TechCrunch report. Jobs reckons that "the cellphone version of Flash isn't functional enough," according to the site, and "there's this missing product in the middle" that would run faster for the Apple phone, while not slowing functionality too much either.
As the same source informs, Adobe's plans at the time (or at least their officially announced plans) didn't include that "product in the middle" which Jobs would be very happy to implement. This being the case, Microsoft's Silverlight would have had an open spot. But now, after having a look at the SDK, Adobe is almost convinced iPhone Flash is doable:
"We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone," Narayen said. "We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash Player ourselves," Adobe's Chief Executive has recently stated.
MacRumors notes that it is not yet known how exactly the San Jose-based software makers would bring Flash to the iPhone, since the iPhone SDK presents a number of restrictions.