[egwynn]

I must be misreading you. It sounds like you’re saying that Apple’s reasoning for not supporting Flash on the iPhone was because “Flash portals” were competing with the iPhone App Store. Is that right?

The iPhone was released in the summer of 2007, didn’t support Flash, and wasn’t intended to run third-party apps[0]. After Jobs caved on releasing an SDK, they finally opened the App Store the following autumn. There was never an opportunity for “Flash portals” to compete with the App Store, let alone to influence the decision to support Flash in the first place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_SDK#History

[thinkloop]

The issue is that flash was a complete runtime, capable of running the equivalent of any app. If flash were allowed to survive, ios could very likely have ended up nothing more than a dumb vm upon which flash apps are run. I remember wondering at the time why flash didn't make a flash phone that did exactly this. They had momentum, tools, and developers, and unlike on the web, there are no downsides relative to native apps.

[redial]

Flash was an inefficient, non-touch optimized, full-of-security-holes competitor's runtime...why would they want it on the iPhone again? when a version for it finally arrived, years later on Andriod, it was so awful that even Adobe realized it wasn't worth murdering everyone's battery life only to have flash web-ads visible.

[thinkloop]

There is nothing inherent to flash that requires it to have security flaws and no touch. The flash vm operates in the same space as the Android and iOS VMs. If it were iterated and improved, and allowed to flourish it could have been a direct competition to native, possibly eventually leading to a flash OS and flash phone, all the pieces are there.

[redial]

Everything can be anything given enough work and time, even JavaScript. The truth is nobody wanted to do all the work required, not even Adobe. Flash's demise is not on Apple, or Google, or Macromedia. It is entirely on Adobe for failing to adapt and modernize it to make it competitive.

[thinkloop]

It seems we agree on all points. If Adobe was good, flash could have been the mobile platform. That's too large a risk for Apple to take.

[koonsolo]

Hey man, don't act so condescending. I was professionally writing games in 2003 for mobile devices (started with PocketPC), and we had the nr 1 best selling game on that platform, so I know my stuff.

And if you really want to know, read this article from Wired on the topic: https://www.wired.com/2008/11/adobe-flash-on/

Sad that I get downvoted for this, but I already accepted that on hacker news, don't go against all the Apple and Google fanboys.

[egwynn]

Sorry if I came across as condescending, that wasn’t my aim. It sounds like perhaps I misread your comment above and that maybe our respective arguments weren’t actually about the same thing. It’s easy to make too many assumptions about what people mean (especially in text-only conversations!) so I’d like to walk you through my thought process in interpreting your words in order to minimize ambiguity.

When I was reading “the only reason they did that was because …”, I mentally substituted the pronouns to read “the only reason Apple didn’t support Flash on the original iPhone was because …”. And then I was left with “The only reason Apple didn’t support Flash on the original iPhone was because Flash portals were competing with their app store”. So that’s the idea that I was confronting. If that’s not the sentiment you were advancing, then the first thing we should do is settle it.

[koonsolo]

Flash games were a serious threat to their app store, that is why they banned Flash. Read the article for more insight.

But since I'm defending Flash, and saying something negative about Apple, let the downvotes begin.

But the blocking of Flash was a business decision, not a technical one, or even a "support the open web" one.

And so yes, if they allowed Flash, then portals were indeed a direct competitor to their app store. That is why they kept them out.

[egwynn]

First up, was I correct in my interpretation of your initial comment? Nothing else makes sense if we're not talking about the same thing.

Second, I'm not suggesting that the threat posed by Flash wasn't ever a factor in any decision Apple ever made about supporting Flash on iOS (then iPhone OS). But you said "the only reason they did that ...", which suggests that there were no other reasons ever. But if the first iPhone was never intended to run 3rd party apps, then there was nothing to compete with at first. If there was nothing to compete with, then the initial decision not to support Flash could not have been motivated by the threat to the then-not-even-planned-to-exist App Store.

[Terretta]

No, that’s not why they didn’t support Flash.

Before the App Store (and still today), iPhone had support for third party apps and an open (non-Apple App Store) app ecosystem, HTML5 apps installable to home screen with offline mode. At the time, you could install games like PacMac that worked fine.

Apple avoided support for Flash because it was absolute crap on mobile, from hardware issues affecting battery life to UX issues such as presumption of a cursor and hover states.

I wish developers and media streamers had let go of Flash sooner and moved to HTML5+JS, before the native App Store captured all the mindshare. Apple’s biggest mistake here was misunderstanding the lasting power of Adobe’s simpler tool ecosystem for “creators”.

iPhone didn’t need Flash. It did need better tools.

// Source: Owned a video CDN throughout the player wars, with ongoing first person conversations with folks from the companies in question, and their key media and publishing clients were our clients.