Apple & Adobe Flash
22 February 2008The lack of Adobe’s Flash means Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch and Apple TV cannot play most of the streaming videos on the Net. Apple’s Mac PCs can play Adobe Flash.
Most analysts cite the lack of Adobe Flash for video playback as the single biggest shortcoming of iPhones, iPod touches and Apple TV.
After all, Google’s YouTube, the world’s largest online video service, uses Flash exclusively. It’s not that Apple doesn’t know about YouTube’s use of Flash. After all, Apple boasts of iPhone, iPod touch and Apple TV’s ability to play YouTube videos. That means either Apple or Google is converting every YouTube video from Flash in order to play on Apple’s devices.
In the beginning Apple and Adobe had a symbiotic relationship. Apple’s inclusion of print drivers for Adobe’s Postscript printing language helped Adobe and Apple. There was a time that Apple even made Postscript compatible laser printers (using the same Canon printing engine that HP did in its first LaserJets).
So, the Wall Street Journal this week asked whether Apple and Adobe would resolve whatever issues there are that prevent Apple from adding Flash to its gear.
The paper quotes a blog by Adobe spokesman for Internet-based applications Ryan Stewart as saying, “No one aside from [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs has any idea if or when it’s coming. Everyone I talk to doesn’t know anything.”
Apple has said it’ll release new software tools for the iPhone this month and some speculate that might allow Flash to be added.
An Apple spokeswoman told the paper that Apple values its relationship with Adobe and pointed out that Jobs said last summer that the products would eventually get Flash.
Microsoft last year launched a competitive product to Flash called Silverlight but it’s hard to see Apple selecting that instead of Adobe Flash. But, stranger things have happened in the world of frenemies that exist in the high tech industry. After all, Apple sells a lot of Microsoft Office software on its Macs.
The thought that Apple is developing its own alternative to Flash is even more difficult to accept.
As long as iPhones, iPod touches and Apple TVs keep selling, Apple may not fell the pressure to add Flash. After all, it’s already getting all of YouTube’s videos.
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