iPhone to support Flash?

by Ryan Block, posted Jun 6th 2007 at 11:51PM

We surely know the iPhone has flash memory, but a lot of people are wondering whether the device's mobile version of Safari will support the Macromedia Flash plugin that most of us know and love / hate. Well, obviously there are no certain answers just yet, but the fact that in the newest iPhone commercial the video player on the NY Times home page didn't return an error telling the user they need to install Flash (see inset) is certainly an encouraging development. Especially for all those who love downloading massive, annoying flash ads, like the ones you sometimes see on this very site.

[Thanks, Andres]

Filed under: Apple

Tags: iphone

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Highly Ranked

tnkgrl @ Jun 7th 2007 12:08AM

YouTube, here we come :)

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drnezzy @ Jun 7th 2007 12:17AM

I don't want to get killed for this, but I really haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere, and ever since I watched the first clips, I've had the same question: Does anyone else think that the phone in the commercials isn't actually being used?

Not to say that it won't perform well when it's released, but wouldn't it make sense for Apple to have a pre-created show of sorts that will show off the system without a single hiccup (or smudge)? Matching up the touching and turning with the "movie" on the phone wouldn't be too difficult, and still shows off what the phone is going to be capable of.

If that were the case, could the Flash portion of the NYT site have been included merely by accident? Just want to see what other people think about this.

Highly Ranked

MacVicta @ Jun 7th 2007 1:12AM

"Does anyone else think that the phone in the commercials isn't actually being used?"

I'm sure everyone asked themselves that question. Most can't believe that it performs so flawlessly.

I think if that were the case, drnezzy, Apple would be required to state somewhere in the ad that what we're watching is a simulated image.

It's also not in Apple's best interest to promise us something that won't be delivered. If anything they should be trying to level these high expectations. For users to spend their money on iPhones only for it to move sluggishly would be the last thing they need.

I believe it's real. I never doubted it was real. It moved as fluidly during the Macworld keynote and that was six months ago. Frankly, for such a price and the fact that it's an Apple product, I expected no less than what I see.

As for smudges, if the fingers are well cleaned along with the screen itself, you'd be hard pressed to see imperfections especially with the backlight on. Other than that, I've been keeping an eye out for initial accounts of usage. It seems the screen won't be the fingerprint magnet we all feared (and hoped for some of you) based on what I'm reading.

"And to answer the most-asked question of all: how smudgy does the screen get? 'Throughout use the phone screen never got messy or smudged. The outside seemed to absorb fingerprints,' responded Felix K. 'My customer definitely touched it every which way, too. We both had clean fingers. It had a very clear, non-glossy screen. The light in Balthazar is always indirect though so that might not apply in sunlight.'"

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/06/06/ars-reader-plays-with-iphone-describes-functionality-as-amazing

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Erik @ Jun 7th 2007 5:04PM

"Does anyone else think that the phone in the commercials isn't actually being used?"

Are you kidding me? It must kill people to see a phone that dosent freeze, slow-down, or show a error message every 5 minutes.

Neutral

derek @ Jun 7th 2007 12:34AM

Well, it is Safari on the phone, it should be able to support all the plugins no problem. It IS running Mac OS X, just with the applications redesigned.

Neutral

kookoobirdz @ Jun 7th 2007 12:35AM

Arrrr, for me it's the Quicktime plugin, mateys. Says it be missin', crashes me browserrrr. Yaarrrr.

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AC @ Jun 7th 2007 2:03AM

If you look at that ad closely, the date on the NY times page that the phone is browsing is October 2, 2006. That commercial probably wasn't filmed in October of last year, so the web page being shown might not have flash, it could just be a place holder with an image of what was there...

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Rich @ Jun 7th 2007 7:11AM

Devices like the Nokia N800 support embedded flash, so it's not exactly surprising that the iPhone does too.

Neutral

Juice @ Jun 7th 2007 8:58AM

If they consider this any type of multimedia phone they better include flash. WTF.

Highest Ranked

phonophiliac @ Jun 7th 2007 10:48AM

The Safari browser on my N95 "shows" flash content, on youtube, NY times, whatever. It also works perfectly for displaying any adds/crap that is flash, but will not *play* the video...

NY times page looks the same on my N95 safari browser, and teases you by showing the first frame of the flv, but when you click on it, the image turns black and the video wont play.

I'm not saying it wont work on the iphone, cause I have no idea... All I'm saying is being able to *see* the clip on the page doesnt mean it will *play* the clip.

We'll all know in a couple of weeks.

Cheers,
Phono

Highest Ranked

Bill @ Jun 7th 2007 11:12AM

Does it really matter if it will play the video or not? Because with only EDGE data speeds, it would take a week to download anyway.

The more internet capability they pack into this phone, the more the slow data speed limitation will rear its ugly head.

Highly Ranked

Rich @ Jun 7th 2007 3:13PM

@Bill - Not only EDGE, Wifi, also. And EDGE isn't as slow as you're trying to make it out to be, especially for small flash objects embedded within pages.

As for the main topic, I'd actually assume that a flash version isn't supported for the browser. Don't you think they would have installed the most common plug-in in existence prior to setting a iphone up for the commercial? Besides that, I don't think Apple would want to deal with a bevy of support calls asking why their iphone is chugging away trying to play a flash video, on hardware that isn't powerful enough to render it properly.

Neutral

Jake @ Jun 7th 2007 3:17PM

Apple is preaching that this thing is the REAL internet. If that is the case we should be able to use flash like I do on my Macbook and view YouTube directly from the website using Wifi, now that would be worth 500 bones.

Neutral

Jam @ Jun 8th 2007 11:01AM

Isn't it at the end of the day the question whether It will be a full fledged Flash support (if any) or just the Flash Lite 2.x without any video support - like on the N95.

... if it is *REALLY* OS X than it should be easy to download the respective full Flash plug-in ... but wasn't Apple somehow reluctant to open the iPhone to 3rd party apps.

It may turn out that we have to wait until the iPhone will actually be somewhere in the wild :-)

Neutral

simon @ Jun 11th 2007 2:59PM

it says that in my opera mini browser on my dash too, basically it just recognizes that there is flash content, but even not being 3g, i highly doubt it will support. You need pretty good bandwidth to view flash. (Not in all cases, but with a phone, you have just a little better than dial up speeds)

Neutral

cjevans5 @ Jun 12th 2007 12:23PM

You'll notice they also scrubbed out all of the banner ads from the times web page except for the Nike/Ipod one. Since there probably isn't a "block all banners except ones from apple" feature built into safari, there has definitely been work done to the page being shown. It wouldn't be that hard to create a fake web page and run it in the browser for the commercial. So it's not really the best evidence either way.

Neutral

Derek Kier @ Jun 29th 2007 7:09PM

I'm excited about the opportunities the iphone will give developers. I'm currently programming on an embedded device using Flash 7. I probably should start learning Flash lite soon.

So how good will the Flash video support be on Flash Lite 3, does anyone know?
-thanks

Derek Kier
http://www.vectorflash.net