Adobe and ARM Partner to Bring Flash to ARM-based Mobiles (Like the iPhone?)
The collaboration is expected to accelerate mobile graphics and video capabilities on ARM platforms to bring rich Internet applications and Web services to mobile devices and consumer electronics worldwide.
This optimization is targeted at the existing ARM11 family (used in the iPhone) and will be available in the second half of 2009. Details are rather sparse, though the implication appears to be that this "optimization" will deliver Adobe Flash to existing mobile devices that are based on the latest ARM platforms.PCMag further specifies that "devices with at least 200 MHz processors, more than around 16 Mbytes of RAM and a 'completely capable [Web] browser' will be able to render Web-based Flash content." Apple's iPhone, of course, fits into all these categories, which raises the question whether or not this could finally deliver Flash functionality to the current iPhone.
In March, Steve Jobs claimed that the iPhone was not capable of supporting the full version of Flash.
As Jobs put it Tuesday during the company's annual shareholder meeting, Apple's iPhone, with all its cutting-edge mobile Internet trickery, needs something much better than the current Flash player that Adobe makes for cellphones. The Flash Player option that fits the bill is made for devices like laptops that are larger than the iPhone; as a consequence, it performs too slowly on the iPhone, he said.
Still, in the end, it will be left to Apple to decide about allowing Flash onto the iPhone. At present, the iPhone SDK terms prevent Adobe from launching a fully integrated version of Flash for the iPhone on its own.
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If you look at other decisions (such as not allowing poor quality video recording through the camera, which you can do via a jailbreaking) you can see that technical capabilities aren't the start and end with Apple, as we all know.
Second half of 2009? Seriously? The iPhone has already been out for well over a year... By the time this comes around, the iPhone may no longer use ARM11 chips.
It's also optimised for Cortex.
It's good to see that they work on this, but to be honest, I don't really miss flash support. I didn't had a single situation in which I did't got the information I needed because of flash... But perhaps I'm the only one :D
You're not the only one. I'd be perfectly happy not to see it on there. Anything which reduces the amount of stuff a page needs before it loads is great, especially on the iPhone which loads slowly enough and doesn't appear to cache anything. I can do without java too.
Flash sometimes makes pages slow-to-load now, but the trouble is when do you agree that a web-enhancing format is ready? I remember when sites only including 20k screenshots for fear of slowing down folks on dial-up. (As I'm sure you do, too). Flash is clearly going to be trivial on most devices in 12-18 months, IMHO.
Apart from a few web sites that rely heavily on Flash content, I don't really miss it much. The main application seems to be advertising content, which is mostly annoying anyway and an unnecessary drain on the battery. Let's hope that Flash will be a user installable option and not shipped with the iPhone as standard (something I don't think Apple is keen on anyway given their preference for open standards).
I also agree with other posters here, surely by the time they have it ready, the iPhone will be shipping with PA Semi processors that may or may not be ARM based.
I've only been inconvenienced once with no flash support during the Rugby League finals when someone asked me what a progress score was. It didn't load and he was unhappy.
I don't care, I follow The World Game
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