Steve Jobs said a big NO to Adobe’s Flash Lite on this week’s annual meeting with Apple shareholders, considering it to be unsuitable for the iPhone. The reason? It is too slow and needs a performance enhancement, Jobs said.
What did Adobe answer to Jobs’ affirmation that the Flash is “too slow to be useful?” Absolutely nothing… A compromise doesn’t seems impossible, in the sense that both Adobe and Apple can sort this problem out.
The question is: are they willing to do it? From the consumers’ point of view, Adobe’s Flash Player is something they want on their iPhone, but as Jobs said, Flash Lite does nothing for the iPhone, while the Flash Player is way to slow.
So, is there a way out of this? Jobs gave a hint that Adobe should, or is, working on some kind of product for the iPhone, but Adobe didn’t confirm his idea of “a missing product in the middle” they might be working on.
What everyone waits right now is a reaction from Adobe, as Apple CEO’s opinions on them weren’t exactly what one would expect from a business partner.
Adobe said just last month, at the Mobile World Congress: “The time to radically improve user experience on mobile handsets is now… Content providers worldwide trust Adobe to deliver engaging experiences in print, on the Web, in video and now mobile is the target for innovative applications that showcase their brands and unique content.”
Over 450 million devices worldwide use Flash technology, with figures expected to double within the next two years. That doesn’t look too convincing for Jobs however, and we still have to wait and see whether we will ever get our hands on an iPhone with Flash content enabled.