Getting Flash On The iPhone

Yesterday, Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen said Flash has been successfully run on an iPhone emulator. This news may raise the hopes that Flash will show itself on the iPhone at some point, maybe even this year. The full story can be read in this Apple Insider article.

My one complaint about working on a Mac has been its less than stellar Flash performance. This is a common complaint, and many of the working Flash guys I know run Windows XP. Apple has complained for some time about the poor OS X performance, and I don’t know if Adobe will change their position. Flash is not the only product that is inferior on the Mac. Acrobat has more functionality (LiveCycle Designer), and features (3D support) under Windows than on OS X. The recent release of Acrobat 9 only furthers this gap.

While the Intel Macs have helped boost Apple’s position in the computer market, I think the bottom line is that Adobe will focus on the platform that delivers more dollars through the door. Corporate customers are more likely to be on a Windows computer. That demographic is the one that relies on the feature set of Acrobat.

Flash leaves me puzzled. I’m seeing a lot more designer/programmer types on Macs, in fact whenever I attend an Adobe related event, the speakers are on Macs. Perhaps the low percentage of Macs in the 3D space has something to do with the lower numbers & Adobe interest. Will be throwing out that question and more while I visit with Adobe here in San Jose.

UPDATE – Found an excellent article regarding Flash & the iPhone via Chris Pirillo.