Apple’s Steve Jobs says that Adobe’s Flash Player is not suited for the Iphone. Basically he says that that Flash performs too slowly on the Iphone because the Player was designed for more robust devices.
This is a real kick in the twins for Iphone users as well as for Adobe. Apple isn’t really talking to Adobe about it, either, as indicated by the Adobe spokesman responding like this:
"No one aside from [Apple Chief Executive] Steve Jobs has any idea if or when it’s coming," Ryan Stewart, Adobe’s chief spokesman for its Internet-based applications, wrote on his blog last month. "Everyone I talk to doesn’t know anything."
This all comes right when Microsoft landed a deal to put it’s new Silverlight platform onto Nokie phones. Silverlight is already picking up steam pretty quickly, and Apple’s swipe at Adobe leaves a huge opening for Microsoft to get it’s foot in the door.
Most of the web’s multimedia uses Flash. Is Apple actually going to expect publishers to start catering to a new format just for the Iphone?
Right now, the Iphone can only play web videos which have been specially ported by Youtube to an Iphone-compliant format.
A wild guess is that Adobe has balked at the idea of creating a special version of Flash just for the Iphone.
And if Apple is not going to support the world’s most popular multimedia format on their phone, where does that leave them? If not Flash, then what?
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OOOH! Pick me! The answer is “Between a rock and a hard place.”