Keep waiting….  From flashmagazine At the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference in Brighton, Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems Paul Betlem, confirmed that Adobe is indeed developing a Flash Player for the iPhone. However, Apple calls the shots as to when it’ll be available.

Well, this is not telling us anything new.  We already knew they had a working model a month ago.  I’m sure they are at 80% already.  The issue is not technical as much as business. If Apple allows the flash player on the iphone, it could lose some business from the app store.  Games are the best selling application in the app store and remember, Apple gets 30% of each sale. Also, Apple has full control over what can and cannot be ran on the iphone. (jailbreakers and pwners excepted) By allowing a Flash player, they would lose that control.  Also, look and feel, a very important concern to Apple. A flash player would be a sub platform with a wild wild west attitude. If you look at just how limited the SDK is for accessing OS level commands, I cannot imagine why Apple would expose itself to potential headaches of a subplatform that will not make the phone anymore popular nor make Apple anymore money. They have enough headaches of their own with OS2.x.  Adding Flash, or Java or anything else is just more headache for no reward.

I’ve been a flash programmer since the days of Flash 4.  I know I can write a flash app to work on the iphone given the specs.  I was able to do it on the ipaq so I’m sure I can do it on the iphone. However, given how heavy flash applications have become, most flash apps out there most likely will not work.  What Adobe needs is something like flash lite but a bit more capable.  Perhaps start with flash 6.  I was able to develop full flung flash application in Flash 6 back in the day, some on the IPAQ, so I know it can be done.

Apple has no intentions of opening up the iphone anytime soon.  The only thing I would watch for is the flash player somehow getting out to the jailbreak users.  Then we’ll see if it can be done or not.  But even then.. wait for it… wait for it…

P.S.  Just to be clear, I would LOVE to see flash on the iphone.  ObjectiveC is just not my friend.