18 Oct
Is this why the iPhone doesn’t support Flash?
Posted on 2008 under iPhone Development, iPhone News |Apple makes no secret that it has no particular interest in making Flash videos work on the iPhone. Apple execs say their objections are purely practical. The full-fledged version of Flash consumes too many resources to work on a portable device, while mobile versions have laughably poor capacity.
Perhaps, but perhaps it’s because Adobe has long treated Apple like in an irrelevant also-ran when designing Flash for desktop and notebook computers. Adobe has worked hard to make Flash run quickly and efficiently on Windows devices while putting out Mac versions that overburden processors and play slowly.
The newest version of Flash — Flash 10 — takes a big step toward correcting the discrepancy, but even now, when Mac sales are skyrocketing, Adobe hasn’t bothered to get the Mac version of its software up to snuff with PC.
According to a fascinating Flash 10 analysis by the folks at Ars Technica, it requires seven times as much processing power to play a flash video on a Mac as it does on a PC.
I’d always heard there was a discrepancy but I never had any idea how huge it was.
Given how much of modern computer usage revolves around watching videos, most of them Flash videos, that’s a serious disadvantage for Apple. No wonder the company isn’t eager to do Adobe any favors for the iPhone.
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