It's real alright. Michel 2009/10/6 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>

dgerard wrote: I'm not up on the details of Flash, so this comment may be misguided, but *if* the reason Apple restricts these unstated "technologies" is for security reasons, then I'm quite glad Apple does, and I'd say it's Adobe that deserves the snarky comment.

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote: Fwiw, the HTC Dream and HTC Magic (first Android phones) run ARM processors, so I don't believe that's the sole concern; I believe that the Palm Pre is on ARM as well, but don't quote me :) Granted, doing intensive flash stuff will drain your battery on any phone, but I don't think the processor is the restriction here. I'm not sure how good the reporting is, but: "Adobe said that a Flash Player for the iPhone is not being made available because it uses a just-in-time compiler and virtual machine within a browser plug-in to play back website content - technologies that aren’t currently allowed on the iPhone." [1] -Chad [1] http://www.gizmag.com/flash-player-101-for-smartphones/13042/

David Gerard wrote: Adobe is the most feared company on the web right now. Even though Microsoft has the most popular browser, a number of excellent alternatives exist: Firefox, Safari, Opera, Konquerer, and Chrome. They don't support 100% of what IE supports, but you can browse the web all day with them and rarely find a site that they don't work with. There are no entirely satisfactory replacements for Flash and Acrobat, and certainly not cross-platform and widely installed. On top of all that, Apple and Microsoft both have personal vendettas against Adobe. Five years ago web video was buried beneath a three-way battle between the MicrosoftOnlyMediaPlayer, TheRealBadMediaPlayer, and TheQuicktimeMediaPlayerThatWorksOccasionally. Publishing video online would typically mean creating files for all three players, and probably at 2-4 different quality levels, so you might have 6-12 files. Then there would be a complex hunk of javascript that would try to guess which player you had, which would work right... if you were lucky. Then there was the whole codec nightmare; even if you had the right player, you probably didn't have the right codec. Although there were supposedly mechanisms for installing new codecs, you'd usually risk wrecking your ability to play video at all if you tried to install a codec. Macromedia (later aquired by Adobe) quietly introduced video capability in Flash... It was a few versions later when Flash video players were widespread, and then all of a sudden people realized that web video could be as simple as pushing "Play" and having the video really play. Apple and Microsoft, both of whom have ambitions to control digital video, will never forgive Adobe.