John Gruber on Flash Player for iPhone

Post by m_eiman » Wed, Oct 01, 2008, 11:45 AM UTC

silencio wrote: post #7

tlrobinson wrote: post #2

"Think about it: If there were a Flash player for the iPhone, you could write games and other software in Flash rather than in Cocoa Touch. And you could sell games and apps directly for the Flash player, completely circumventing the App Store. Does this sound like something Apple would allow?" But... No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple…

The problem with that part of the NDA is that Frotz is available on the app store and has been for a month or two. Frotz is an interactive fiction application (arguably interpreted) and also open source (gplv2, http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/ ), two things technically incompatible with the NDA. I don't really think Apple meant to include the likes of Frotz. Seems like the biggest issue is arbitrary rejection (a…

Post by iron_ball » Wed, Oct 01, 2008, 1:38 PM UTC

ii wrote: post #9

msie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm also patiently waiting for Linux to catch up to OSX in usability/UI." That gave me a chuckle. The first thing that the Linux world should do is decide on one UI to use but that will never happen. It is philosophically impossible.

As it was "impossible" for Apple to decide when all they had was the old Macintosh toolbox and NextStep UIs, but they did it. They made Carbon/Cocoa to look reasonably consistent despite huge internal differences. Linux can do the same with Qt/GTK+/etc. It certainly possible to have high-level UI consistency between multiple toolkits, especially when they all share the same lower-level stuff (X11/Cairo).

Post by cpr » Wed, Oct 01, 2008, 2:59 PM UTC

codeLullaby wrote: post #14

The Flash Player in development for iPhone is not a port of existing standalone one. As they put it,the new player in development is something in between Flash Lite and Flash Player for desktop. So this is going to be a watered down version of Flash Player. Chances are that Apple will approve a Flash player which is targeted only to render flash content on web pages as it will make the browsing experience on iPhone c…

Post by cstejerean » Wed, Oct 01, 2008, 3:54 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #10

fdb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Apple can do what they want. It's the others that need to adhere to these rules.

Therein lies the problem: there are no published rules. You only find out that you've broken them after you've completed development of your app and submitted it to the app store. Say goodbye to several months of your life.

Post by cpr » Wed, Oct 01, 2008, 6:03 PM UTC

codeLullaby wrote: post #16

cpr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, chances are (as John so eloquently argues) that Apple will do no such thing, as it would seriously water down the whole iPhone UI experience. Read the article!

There is a difference between running swfs on phone interface and rendering flash elements on webpages. Allowing swfs to run directly on phone interface definitely interfere with iPhone UI experience,but rendering webpages along with flash elements in it only makes the browser experience closer to what is expected from the browser app. Its a good thing for Apple.