will iphone get flash? Not sure...

[rotobadger]

I was just thinking about whether the iphone really will get flash at some point. I read in another post that You Tube is working to make, at some point, all videos compatible with the iphone (currently there are only a handfull that can be viewed). If the iphone did get Flash, there would be no need for them to invest their time and money in making You Tube "iphone compatible". In fact, why would you even need a You Tube widget if your phone had flash? You could just bookmark You Tube.com.

In short, adding Flash would negate all the work done to make these videos play without Flash.

And thoughts?

[Lurk]

I was just thinking about whether the iphone really will get flash at some point. I read in another post that You Tube is working to make, at some point, all videos compatible with the iphone (currently there are only a handfull that can be viewed). If the iphone did get Flash, there would be no need for them to invest their time and money in making You Tube "iphone compatible". In fact, why would you even need a You Tube widget if your phone had flash? You could just bookmark You Tube.com.

In short, adding Flash would negate all the work done to make these videos play without Flash.

And thoughts?

The videos aren't just be encoded for the iPhone - the encoding started for the AppleTV. As well - I can definitely see the benefit of using the YouTube widget as opposed to browsing to the webpage and trying to readjust the screen to make the movie as full screen as possible - then having to zoom out when I'm done.

[Maaz]

nah their probably saving it for the next iphone they will release.

[ps49556n]

I was just thinking about whether the iphone really will get flash at some point. I read in another post that You Tube is working to make, at some point, all videos compatible with the iphone (currently there are only a handfull that can be viewed). If the iphone did get Flash, there would be no need for them to invest their time and money in making You Tube "iphone compatible". In fact, why would you even need a You Tube widget if your phone had flash? You could just bookmark You Tube.com.

In short, adding Flash would negate all the work done to make these videos play without Flash.

And thoughts?



Good points, I have felt the same way. I would also like to add that I feel Flash is a long way off, possibly years away. I believe eventually iPhone will get flash support but I dont see it happening anytime soon (not till 3rd or 4th generation). Here are my reasons:

-Flash is a resource hog. Running flash on the current iPhone hardware would slow it down to a crawl. Imagine loading a website that has 2 flash movies on it, 8 flash based ads, flash based interface, etc... It would run terribly slow.

-h.264 is Apple's own solution to Flash based video...they are utilizing it heavily in Apple TV and iPhone and they have a deal with YouTube to "supposedly" convert the entire library to h264 (who knows when...). Doesn't make sense for Apple to drop all the progress they made recently with h264 to support Flash, a non Apple format.

-As the OP said, why would Apple and Youtube waste the time and money developing a YouTube widget for iPhone and announce they would support h264?? Doesnt make sense.



Honestly I hope I am 100% wrong and Apple an Adobe are secretly developing a special iPhone edition of Flash that runs efficiently and some how blocks flash advertisements.

[PhatKid]

I don't see the fact that YouTube has a widget as an argument against the phone getting flash. You could bookmark Google Maps and just use that, but the widget makes it easier. You can get stocks and weather in other places, but widgets add to the ease. I see YouTube's widget as both a marketing device and a resource for easy access to entertainment. However, I don't doubt that it could be a long time off before the iPhone gets flash. I hope not though.

[x999x]

Has anyone here actually done some research on Flash?

I mean before we wish, hope and dream, let's look at the facts.

First off, Flash is already running on Windows Mobile, it's not a big deal, but it does prove to us that Flash is scalable. It has since been left for dead as a new more powerful Flash is already on the shelves.

Adobe has been hard at work on Flash Lite which is aimed specifically at the mobile market. What's great about Flash Lite is that it's player is version 7, which means it has actionscript 2.0 support and the ability to stream media.

If I had to guess why there's no Flash currently available, I'd say it wasn't because it's not possible, but because both parties have yet to come to terms as they both stand to gain a lot from the agreement. Apple gains a web standard, and Adobe gets a new audience to further propel it's brand names.

I reckon if Apple weren't such snobs, and Adobe weren't up on their high-horse we'd be watching Strong Bad videos on our iPhones right now.