Apple wouldn’t have said no to Flash on iPhone if it worked

Apple hasn’t completely dismissed the idea of ​​Flash on the iPhone, explained Scott Forstel, the former head of iOS development, and Apple even provided technical assistance to Adobe but the results were disastrous..

In testimony in the context of the lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games, Scott Forrestal explained that there had been no initial opposition to Adobe’s content animation and media management technology on iOS, yet users would not find their accounts there:

We did not release the flash. We tried to run Flash. Adobe helped us. We were really interested. Again, this is an area that I thought if we could help make it work, it could be great.

Flash was a huge problem with the way it integrated with systems, it was a nightmare of viruses on Windows, even on the Mac.

And when we first started it on iOS, the performance was appalling and annoying, and it was not possible to come up with something that would provide added value to consumers.

Flash on iPhone was a long-running series between Apple and Adobe, both of which are partners. In March 2008, just over a year after the iPhone was announced, Steve Jobs Pay for retreat The idea of ​​seeing this player arrive at its new portable system is based on the fact that Flash showed insufficient performance there and that it was draining the battery too much.

A few days later, confident in its capabilities, Adobe Asura About its intention to create an iOS version in anticipation of the app store opening in the summer of the same year. While acknowledging that Apple’s help was as necessary as required. In October 2008, it was the iOS version of Flash Player Employment At Adobe, but the doors of Apple and the App Store remained closed.

Faced with Adobe that distributed Flash player to Any Wind on other platforms – not without facing criticism for their performance – and lashing out to criticize Apple’s intransigence Steve Jobs put an end to the controversy in April 2010.

Spread A famous open letter It aligned Apple’s many arguments against Adobe technology (see also Steve Jobs tried to recruit Kevin Lynch in 2010). Poor Flash performance has again been cited there, but that is no longer the only issue.

In two years, the App Store had grown and with it all the potential of iPhone apps. Flash was no longer seen as just a sugar thrown into the iPhone’s tank, it was seen as a software platform in its own right, able to compete with native app development. Adobe has all the interest in pushing developers towards the SDK rather than the Apple Development Kit.

Since January 12, Adobe owns buried Flash works on all platforms and browsers by default to compress all content that is still online.