by: Shane McGlaun
Still no support for the iPhone coming
Apple single handedly reinvigorated the smartphone industry and spawned a plethora of touch capable devices when it launched the iPhone. Since the original iPhone debuted, Apple has offered two more updated models of the device with the 3GS hitting the market last week.
One of the major missing pieces in the iPhone for many users is the ability to run Adobe Flash technology. iPhone owners have been crying for Flash support since the iPhone launched and still there is no version of Flash for the iPhone.
Adobe's CEO Shantanu Naraye announced at an investors conference that the next version of Flash will be Flash 10 beta and it will hit in early October. The new beta version will support almost every smartphone platform out there including Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Notice the lack of iPhone support.
The availability of the beta coincides with the Adobe Max conference. The news is important for the newer Android and webOS devices that have lacked a good Flash player so far. Symbian and Windows mobile have been able to play Flash content for a while.
Adobe doesn't mention Flash support for the iPhone at all. With all the hubbub about Flash on the iPhone, the odds of something of that magnitude being pre announced are slim though. That sort of announcement is something that would take place at a press conference most likely.
Adobe says that ARM, NVIDIA, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Intel, and TI are all in the process of optimizing their hardware to support the new version of the Flash Player. DailyTech reported last week that HTML 5 is being hyped as a potential replacement for Flash and Google has shown a version of YouTube running on HTML 5 already. The new standard is, perhaps unsurprisingly, being authored and backed by Google and Apple. Perhaps it will make the days of the lack of Flash being an issue on the iPhone are numbered.
