No Flash for the iPhone

While developping for the iPhone recently and having to decide between Flash Lite and mobile Safari as an Application Platform some thoughts came to my mind that I wanted to share: Why is there no Flash on the iPhone? Is that a bad thing? Will it be available soon? Let’s try to find out…

Thanks to Cameron Hunt I also stumpled upon a great article: Why there’s no flash on the iPhone by Kontra which is highly recommended.

It’s a new Operating System Paradigm

Obviously the iPhone is a whole new UI paradigm where Flash cannot simply be ported as it doesn’t support multi touch right now. For example interface components like a date chooser follow a totally different interaction concept on the Apple phone.

“With the iPhone, Apple has been slowly but surely creating a third major OS platform and UI aesthetics commensurate with a multi-touch driven, small scale mobile device. This is a company so obsessed with UI and user experience that it hasn’t yet introduced something as basic as copy and paste on the iPhone 2.0 because, as is rumored, it hasn’t quite nailed a proper UI pattern.

In this highly charged and competitive marketplace to establish the next UI paradigm for mobile devices, Apple is not about to give Adobe or any other company free reins to dilute its brand proposition by introducing cross-platform, common-denominator UIs and interaction patterns to be mingled with Apple’s carefully orchestrated multi-touch approach.”
– Kontra

It’s not about technical challenges it’s about a rightful desktop successor

A comment at the bottom of this article really hit me:

“People are missing the point of the article, I think. The point is not ‘technical challenges’ that can eventually be overcome, the point is Apple is taking steps to establish multi-touch as the true and rightful successor to the mouse-and-desktop interface.

For that to occur, Apple is strategically preventing anything that had the potential to break the multi-touch experience.”
– lavalight

Wow that’s a good point. By the way is multi-touch a rightful successor to the mouse-and-desktop interface?

Safari/Webkit is the new black

Having talked about this before I still think porting Webkit/Safari to the iPhone is one of the most intelligent decisions made by Apple in the last years. Kontra also has a good point about that:

“Apple’s ‘RIA runtime’ is turning out to be WebKit. With the upcoming MobileMe apps Apple’s arguing that an Ajax-based UI in a web browser can be as effective as a desktop app or an RIA delivered via Flash. In other words, Apple is saying: if you want to natively deliver an app for the iPhone use Cocoa Touch and if you’re reaching for cross-platform ubiquity (including on the iPhone with Safari mobile) use Ajax. Not a complicated proposition.”
– Kontra

Webkit is pushing Webstandards to new limits

The main problem of beloved web standards like HTML and CSS is that their evolution seems to be paused at the moment. Developers are waiting for the Standard Group to come up with new features but they seem to be stuck in discussions. But now with Apple pushing Webkit as a plattform things become interesting. Slowly they’ve been pushing new innovations to browser engine that enables more sophisticated and innovative User Interfaces in the future web. Only to name some examples:


So what’s this all about?

So to sum this whole stuff up I truly doubt that Flash in all its glory will soon be available on the iPhone. But that’s not the interesting point in the discussion. I think the current boost in browser evolution mainly driven by the Webkit team will really help to improve the web experience.

The Webkit engine is also empowering other projects like Android and Air. So the competition between the technologies is fruitful for the evolution of Interface Design and Web Standards. Big things a gwaan …

One Comment

  1. Matthias Wagler said on 01.10.2008

    Seems like I could resolve my doubts. Cause Flash is coming to the iPhone.

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