Wired.com’s Gadget Lab posted a very interesting take on the possibility that Apple might just stop Flash from appearing on the iPhone altogether. Logically speaking, allowing Flash would mean allowing another development platform onto the iPhone itself. That would definitely be too dangerous to Apple, a company known for their total control over its hardware and software.
Flash would open new doors (and windows) for application developers to get their own software onto the iPhone. Code them in Flash and put them on a web page, simple as that! This would definitely divert business away from the App Store, as well as the iTunes Store.
A clause in the iPhone developer’s Terms of Service agreement prohibits Flash from appearing on the iPhone:
“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise,” reads clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement, which was recently published on WikiLeaks. “No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”
We all know for sure that Adobe is currently working on a version of Flash for the iPhone. With that clause, it is very likely that the application would ever appear in the App Store. But if things were to be reversed, and we eventually have Flash on the iPhone, I could very well predict Steve Jobs saying “a highly requested feature” during his keynote.
Currently, lack of Flash support has been a major disappointment for iPhone owners, who enjoyed having a full featured browser via Safari. Popular services like YouTube videos, for example, is only possible via the built-in YouTube application within each iPhone/iPod touch.
But all else is not lost yet. We can still hope for a “lite version” of Flash for the iPhone, which does not support its own development platform.
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