No support for Adobe’s Flash is but one of the myriad of features that many iPhone users wish they had on their beloved handheld devices. In fact, it may be among the most frustrating, right up there behind the lack of a cut-and-paste-feature. How many of us have been checking something online, only to find that a page is made entirely in Flash and therefore impossible to read on the iPhone?
Despite 2008’s many public statements by Adobe that the company was committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone, we’re now into the second month of 2009 and there’s still no Flash in sight.
This past weekend, in an interview with Bloomberg News at the Davos World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said: “It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” adding “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”
What exactly that means at this stage is anyone’s guess. Hell, it’d be hard to call those readable tea leaves—more like a used-up tea bag. But here in France, they having a saying: Plus ça change…plus c’est la meme chose.
You’ll recall, no doubt, that Steve Jobs made the case that Flash wasn’t good enough for the iPhone nearly a year ago. Since then, some have speculated that Apple may be looking at a rival technology, SproutCore, to fulfill its Flash needs.
Until then, I—along with every other iPhone user—will have to suffer under the unbearabble lightness of a Flash-less web.
[via CNET]