Adobe Desperate to Install Flash on the IPhone

The following quote is from Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayan, regarding Flash on the iPhone.

It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating [...] The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.

What on Earth can this mean? Apple has repeatedly poured scorn on Flash, calling it too slow and inefficient for the iPhone and even saying that it doesn't work well on desktop machines. Adobe, for its part, keeps yapping away and snapping at the iPhone's heels like a faithful, over enthusiastic doggy. Back in September last year, Adobe's Paul Petiem said that the company was already working on Flash for the iPhone.

We know that Apple, and Steve Jobs in particular, has a history of denying new products and then shipping them soon after, so we'll leave aside the speculation and look at some facts.

First, does the iPhone need Flash? YouTube, which is Flash-based on the web, recoded all of its video in the h.264 codec to run on the iPhone. The Safari Web browser even shows a still preview of any YouTube video embedded in the page. The seamless result works great, and is Flash-free.

The other major use of Flash (other than terrible, annoying websites which should frankly be banned) is in interactive web services like Flickr slideshows or "cloud" photo editing applications. A fair point, until you realize that the tiny iPhone screen isn't great for any kind of editing, photos or words. If a company has to recode a site to fit into the iPhone's screen, why not do it in as lightweight a way possible and skip Flash altogether. This is what Flickr has actually done.

And possibly even more important is the drain on resources. Last night, the Lady's MacBook was screaming like a leaf-blower after thirty seconds of YouTube video. This isn't an old machine either -- it is just over a year old and is stuffed with RAM. If Flash can drain her battery like an Englishman can drain a pint of lager, surely an iPhone version would be even harder on the tiny battery.

Last, for Flash to behave as it does on the "desktop web", it would need to work as a plugin for Mobile Safari. As of this writing, this is not allowed. Apple, of course, can stick whatever it likes inside Safari, but third parties are prohibited. The Google Maps application for the iPhone was actually written by Apple, not Google as many people think, as Apple likes to control what is going on. If Flash were implemented, it would come from in-house, not from Adobe.

Which brings us back to that odd quote from Narayan, "Apple and Adobe are collaborating." It seems straightforward enough, but is likely to be just bluster and wishful thinking. In fact, compare it to a statement made by Narayan on the Adobe earnings conference call, all the way back in March last year:

we’re also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone and we’ll work with Apple. [emphasis added]

Sound familiar?

Adobe’s Narayen Says Flash on IPhone Is a Challenge [Bloomberg]