iPhone News Updated

Stating that Flash is too slow for the iPhone and Flash Lite too limited, Jobs disappointed legions of developers expecting Apple to embrace the now-ubiquitous standard for embedded web widgets, ads, games and other rich media presentations.

If Jobs is unhappy with Adobe, it's understandable. After many years of close association with Apple—it rose on Jobs' patronage of its Postscript language in the 1980s—it has recently taken that relationship for granted. It refused, for example, to update its Mac software for more than a year after Apple switched to Intel processors. (When I called for tech support on Rosetta emulation problems at the time, an Adobe staffer suggested I switch to a Windows environment if one was available and offered to transfer my license.)

When Jobs says Flash is "too slow," it's worth remembering that the iPhone is not a powerful computer. In that sense, a Formula 1 car's chassis would be "too slow" for a lawnmower engine, too.

That said, Flash does has a reputation for slow performance compared to the other popular web-embeddable language, Java. Traditionally, the best flash presentations are those coded by experts with a keen awareness of its limits—Apple wisely fears iPhones being hammered by the Internet's inexhaustible supply of badly-constructed Flash garbage. Moreover, Flash has traditionally performed worse on Macs, a fact that's only heightened the impression Adobe now considers Apple to be an afterthought.

Recent versions, however, offered major performance improvements. Adobe could easily present a set of Flash production guidelines to optimize performance for the iPhone. It's hard to ignore the fact that iPhone users are clamoring for Flash, and that without it, the iPhone will never offer the real-deal web. So what gives?

One possibility is that Flash, for all its flaws, is powerful and useful enough to end-run Apple's development model for the iPhone, wherein amateurs code plain-jane web apps in HTML, P-languages and javascript, and only approved SDK licensors gain access to more powerful capabilities. Flash might not hook into to features like multitouch input, but it's good enough to dent plans for a tightly-curated ecosystem of third-party development.

Or perhaps the remarks were merely the mercurial Jobs' way of telegraphing an announcement of Flash for iPhone: a new intermediary version tailored to Cupertino's high-end smartphone and Intel's forthcoming MID devices.

Dream on, developers.