One of the most conspicuous absences from the iPhone, other than 3rd party VOIP, is the lack of a Flash player and the content it plays. That condition may or may not change in the near future.
From day one of the iPhone launch, Adobe has been determined to pry-bar Flash onto the platform but Apple has been more than cool to the notion, taking the strategic position of saying very little about the matter and doing even less.
While at the Adobe MAX 2009 conference, Adobe announced Adobe Flash Professional CS5 and put forth the claim that Flash will be on the iPhone. The recipe for a succesful developer scenario requires Flash using Actionscript 3, a device with a minimum hardware requirement of an ARM Cortex A-series processor and the connection to the desktop and an Intel based Mac is a must, no PowerPC welcome.
Flash projects are run through a Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) compiler infrastructure so that the outcome is an iPhone app that can be submitted to the Apple iPhone App store. A better and more complete description is located at: Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash.
Adobe, with the help of outside developers, has managed to get 8 applications through the App Store acceptance process and are located on the store now, a list is at Adobe: Applications for iPhone.
This announcement was released today, at the very end of the day at the conference. How Apple reacts to this development remains to be seen.
Originally published in the Swiss online newspaper, www.zitig.ch, reedited for WholeThinking.
