Apple’s iPhone shy away from Adobe Flash

This entry was posted by G' Blog on Thursday, 19 November, 2009 at

adobe_flashJust last month, Adobe announced the introduction of their Adobe Flash Player 10.1 software for smartphones, netbooks, smartbooks, PCs and other Internet-connected devices. The Flash software 10.0 brings full Flash including GPU acceleration to smartphones assuring a consistent runtime release allowing for uncompromised web browsing of applications, video and content across various platforms.

The use of Flash technology is nearly universal around the World Wide Web and is used by well-known sites such as Youtube, NVIDIA, Shockwave and many more. However one of the main drawbacks of Flash on smartphones is that it is too resource-intensive and can drain a mobile device’s battery or slow it down.

Recognizing the performance issues, Adobe is utilizing graphical hardware acceleration for the full version of Flash to make it easier for mobile processing demands. Flash 10.1 has a powerful device integration which enables Flash developers to make use of device-specific features such as virtual keyboards, multi-touch gestures as well as accelerometers.

Apple nervous about adobe flash on iPhone
Missing from the line-up is Apple, whose iPhone SDK policies prevent Adobe from running Flash Player on the iPhone. Apple stated Flash is not good enough for its iPhone due to its resource requirements and it also poses a threat to the popular App store as it gives developers the opportunity to bypass Apple’s software development kit and create content with Adobe’s technology instead. smartphones

Argument is that iPhone users are becoming less interested in Flash apps on the iPhone as they have plenty of Apple ones to keep them occupied. Additionally, Apple appears to be backing HTML5 for its mobile platform which can provide some Flash-like abilities such as video streaming.

There is also now the Flash Player 10.1 pre-release version available for PCs and netbooks to give developers the chance to assess and give feedback to Adobe regarding compatibility issues and new features. A beta version is expected to be released for Palm WebOS later this year. Public betas for Google Android and Symbian OS are expected to be available early 2010.

Earlier this week, Adobe Labs released its two newest beta test versions of its Flash 10.1 and AIR 2.0 (Adobe Integrated Runtime) technologies. Adobe said the new versions do not just include much-requested features but they also represent a big push into devices beyond the PC, starting with smartphones, and eventually applications that run on every device you use.


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