JD on EP

Sweet, Jobs has no clue if Flash works on his iPhone product. :: double sigh ::

Ok, so I *think* this is good news. Am I missing something about YouTube? I thought YouTube video was 100% Flash based. Maybe if/when Jobs finds this out, he will insist on Flash support.

It's bad news because YouTube DOES need Flash; it's the main reason YouTube was successful; the video works because a lot of people have Flash Player 7 and it just works.

Since Jobs clearly doesn't understand this, he inadvertently shows he has no clue what, software wise, his iPhone can run, namely Flash Player in their Safari version.

...need another source inside Apple that's a geek, not a suit.

I can't speak for Steve Jobs, and know nothing more of this issue than what's in the public record, but he might be talking about transcoding YouTube video before delivery to the device, for instance.

(ie, "you don't need to have Flash for YouTube" might be in the context of his future device, rather than in the context of the current webbrowser experience.)

Well all steve needs to do is have the developers add support for flash ver 7 flv (spark encoding) file format in a special version of quicktime and is only on the iphone. TAADAA! youtube video support. It's not like apple would allow the standard youtube playback interface anyways. They are already working with google on support in the phone for search stuff. Jobs is many things but having "no clue" is not one of them. Flash will be most likely used on the phone when and where apple wants it to.

There are many ways to play YouTube content without having Flash installed. Example: Perian.org has a codec for playing FLV in Quicktime or as John mentioned, it may be about transcoding the video prior to iPhone delivery (maybe a deal with Google video?).

This interview provides no information except perhaps that Jobs doesn't know much or didn't understand the question. Also, it shows that the product is far from finished. We'll see.

One thing I haven't heard any discussion on is the fact that IF Flash is supported it's only insofar as the browser plugin. That is, with all the limits of being in the browser. The point being that some sort of native support would be better. (Admittedly I have no clue how it works in FlashLite--but those apps don't run in a standard browser window and sandbox do they?)

Thanks,
Phillip

Update: Here's the Macwelt link, and a MacRumors translation. [via Digg]

The "will have Flash and Java" line appears to be based on the reporter's summary, rather than direct quotation, in either German or English.

Transcoding........ not likely.

The whole point of closing up the IPhone to 3rd parties is to deliver a solid end user experience that just works. Trying to transcode video at the device will not work whatsoever.

Trying to get Youtube to do it to their entire video database is also absolutely ridiculous.

While YouTube is cool, I highly doubt that the cost of converting all this video would actually be worth it. I am not a very strong believer in the fact that people will use their IPhones for this on a regular basis.

They will try it once, and likely not use it anymore frequently than that. If I was YouTube, I would be working harder to deliver an awesome interface for Home Theatre browsers (Wii,PS3) than I would be worrying about this at this stage.

I mean, I know most of us here are Flash advocates/fanboys, but to me this seems clear:

1: Adobe will not allow this phone to come out without some kind of Flash support in the browser. Obviously mobile is a #1 priority for Adobe, and I am positive the right people are already talking with Apple to get this figured out. If this is not the case, then heads should roll.

2: Apple has to just smarten up and realize that Flash is a powerhouse on the web. It boggles me that they would resist it in anyway shape or form. Half of the web these days, uses Flash, and a browser without it will just be crap period. Remember that Apple is touting that it browses the Web "Just like Safari, it's OSX". Yeah whatever.....

On the Opera Browser for the Wii, Flash absolutely shines in comparison to the traditional web content out there. Developers can deliver awesome experiences to the Home Theatre they way it is meant to be delivered (death to the document already!).

If you gave me a Flash Player 7 on that phone, I could deliver a Finetune Mobile interface that I am confident would be outstanding. Without it, no Rich Media at all. Quicktime?........., sorry Apple, lame........:

Us web developers use Flash these days for Rich Media on the web. Wake up and smell the Penetration Statistics.

Oh Yeah and: YouTube requires Flash. I am totally blown away the Jobs didn't know that.

You all are crazy if you don't think Jobs knows every detail about the iPhone. It's not that he doesn't know what software runs on it... It's that the answer hasn't been finalized.

This thing is running a custom-built versions of everything (This phone is almost guaranteed to NOT be running on x86 or PPC chips, so it's not "really" OS X). The real question is can Adobe port a flash player over to this platform fast enough? Or is the iPhone going to get stuck with Flash Lite, like all the other phones out there.

Word on the street is that the iPhone is going to be running a Samsung ARM chip. Are we going to see FP9 for ARM by June? Unlikely. Are we going to see Flash Lite ported to the iPhone to work with Safari? It's possible.

I'll also have to agree with previous comments about YouTube and flash not being needed... Just like the custom Google Maps interface that they built for the iPhone, I see a custom YouTube interface, too. They probably won't need to transcode anything... I'm going to bet they'll just extend Quicktime to play the FLV stream.

Actualy, as FLV format is an open one, YouTube requires ANY software that plays FLV, for example the free VLC player.

So maybe Jobs is looking into integrating an encoder for FLV rather than full Flash support. I wish it wasn't so.

UPDATE: After reading this blog, I went back to the audio of the interview. See, jobs had said something ELSE after his YouTube remark, but I listened 30 times and could NOT understand it (there was background noise).

So I asked John Markoff if he could listen to his original and transcribe the next two lines, and they're semi-helpful on this Flash/YouTube issue. Here's the more complete answer:

Jobs: "Yeah, YouTube—of course. But you don't need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get 'em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec."
-------

Not sure if that actually settles the "Flash or not" question, though, but it seems to show Mr. Jobs's confidence in his own industry power!

--David Pogue

YouTube is not going to switch to h.264 codec just for iPhone support...that's delusional. The reason YouTube is successful is because of the insane install base of Flash. QuickTime's install base is much less.

If Steve wants YouTube, they'll need the Flash plug-in. And the youth market that Apple loves to target wants YouTube. So, iPhone's Safari browser will have Flash support.

i think we are ignoring the mobile side of this. Verizon has already announced a deal with youtube (http://www.moconews.net/entry/youtube-does-a-deal-with-verizon-for-mobile-video-the-futility-of-it-all/)

This is not youtube internet, this is youtube mobile internet where you PAY for everything. Flash install base makes not one bit of difference here, its about revenue. In which case they can pay for a custom flv player or whatever. Just like I imagine Verizon will be doing for their current subscribers, or re-encoding the best of youtube to another format.

I am not saying that it wont have Flash, I just mean when theres revenue you can do whatever you want as the Verizon deal proves.

Please wake me up when we have some actual info! Seriously, this is getting silly. Anything is possible, but only AFTER it happens will we know. I don't really mind all the speculation, but man, I've heard quite a range of speculation and it's all over the place.

Having Flash on it would be great, but I think people are losing sight of the technical issues involved. Many desktop computers struggle with rendering pages featuring several Flash movies; I can't see how they could freely allow Flash within the iPhone's Safari, the power just won't be there and I think they'd rather have no support than poor support.

A dedicated YouTube/Google Video app and/or some kind of mechanism for hooking into Flash video sites (so some FLVs could be passed directly to the iPhone's video player using some kind of microformat) seems far more likely.

Steve is fully aware that YouTube is Flash only, hes saying if they wanted to, they could get YouTube to serve them Quicktime files instead

Hes in a position where he doesnt think, oh we could add YouTube support, hes thinking how he always thinks, YouTube could add iPhone support!

Typical Steve Jobs right there :-)

"YouTube is not going to switch to h.264 codec just for iPhone support...that's delusional...
If Steve wants YouTube, they'll need the Flash plug-in."

Kind of a funny quote in retrospect... though I'll go on the record as guessing that a future version of iPhone will support some form of Flash.

I think it's kind of funny reading through all these posts about how clueless Jobs is, how YouTube would never convert all their videos, that iPhone must have Flash. I guess a lot of people are eating crow right now.