paulhasablog

Oh, wouldn't it be splendid to live in a world where we could have the entire Internet in our pockets, as well as all the rollerskating dogs and seizure-inducing banner ads that come along with it? Adobe sure thinks so, as its Senior Director of Engineering, Paul Betlem, made another pass at practically begging Apple to come over to the dark side.

At the Flash on the Beach 08 conference in Brighton, UK, Betlem took another public shot at sinking Adobe's claws further into Apple's mobile OS. "My team is working on Flash on the iPhone," Betlem reminded attendees. He also restated that "it's a closed platform." Thanks, Captain Obvious.

Betlem told those listening that Apple makes all the decisions, but apparently didn't say much about whether any performance progress had been made since Steve Jobs slammed both Flash and Flash Lite at a shareholder's meeting in March. Jobs says Flash runs too slowly on the iPhone, and Flash Lite is simply "not capable of being used with the web."

These comments haven't deterred Adobe from pushing the matter, however, as it claimed back in June that it has a version of Flash running in Apple's iPhone Simulator. Adobe hasn't commented on how well that version runs, but if Flash's persistently dreadful performance on Mac OS X is any indication, my personal money is on a performance rating of "Martha, get mah shotgun." But hey, at least Adobe is ready with a proprietary Internet technology for a (admittedly proprietary) device that focuses on web standards.

The Flash on iPhone "thing" has been a constant thread since the original iPhone landed. At least, like, a hundred guys weren't able to use one to play that one awesome Flash gameAlbino Blacksheep. Talk picked up in recent months, however, after Microsoft announced that it licensed both Flash Lite and Reader LE for the Windows Mobile OS and all OEMs. Microsoft's Silverlight, it seems, remains to be the poor freshman who couldn't score a date for the prom.

Joking aside, we are, of course, aware of the fact that far more than 100 guys want Flash on the iPhone, and for a bit more than silly games. However, there is ultimately the matter of the iPhone SDK rules to contend with. Apple has yet to show a sliver of mercy in its ban of application runtime environments from the iPhone OS. If Apple conceded to a company even as large as Adobe, the company would have to open a virtual Pandora's box to other platforms that would undoubtedly vie for the same opportunity. Call us crazy, but at the very least, we figure Apple has plenty of other problems to deal with right now.