How Flash Could Get on the IPhone [How Wired Could be Wrong]
Dec 3, 2008 Uncategorized
Wired recently published an article on their site titled – Why Apple Won’t Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone, and I think their logic isn’t quite right. I agree there is the possibility that Flash may never end up on the iPhone but I belive there are conditions in which could happen. (warning: conditions may include unicorns and flying pigs).
The article mentions that Flash would actually violates Apple’s Terms of Service agreement for the iPhone and mention two points in particular
An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise,
No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).
What I am hoping is the solution Adobe has hinted at is a version of the Flash Player built for the iPhone as a plug-in of Safari and included as a built-in interpreter. It would mean Apple would have to release it as a firmware update. In that case I don’t see it violating Apple’s TOS. (However – it seems Apple can bend rules if needed)
Now, a more lofty hope would be to allow an AIR like Flash Player built in to the firmware so that applications could be developed in Flex/Actionscript 3. The only way this would be acceptable though is if the iAIR apps were sold through the iTunes store. The only reason I could see Apple doing this is if they wanted to grow the developer community to include Flash/Flex developers, but since they don’t seem to be hurting for developers they may not have enough motivation to allow it. A fanboy can dream can’t he?
Until then I’ll have to be content with my own means of getting flash on the iPhone – lowering my expectations. 
Kevin Lynch (CTO of Adobe) talks more about it.
