Why doesn't the iPhone support flash?

John Gruber offers the best explanation for why there is no Flash support in MobileSafari.

Great article. I completely agree with it. Thats probably one reason Apple made a YouTube application for the iPhone – no need for flash.

Just to add some information to the broader picture, there is a lot of effort (it seems) going into Flash “Lite” (read: mobile) development. So the game is far from over. The article is correct: Apple has no incentive to put any Flash player on its iPhone/iPod except to do it for the customers and if that’s the only reason then you can bet that it won’t happen.

The closest thing to flash is a bookmarklet called iTransmogrify. Unfortunately, I can’t post a link due to the fact that my iPod does not copy/paste and that my computer is acting funny. So just google itransmogrify and it’s the first result. What it does is it detects youtube videos on the web page and sends you to the youtube app so you can watch the video.

tinytube.net does this as well.

not sure would be nice..

@gimmedat have you heard about the comma or—gasp—semicolon?

My computer’s working again so here’s a link to iTransmogrify: ( Use link with iPhone/iPod Touch.)

http://joemaller.com/___?javascript:if%28typeof%28iTransmogrify%29%3D%3D%27undefined%27%29%7Bvar%20s%3Ddocument.createElement%28%27script%27%29%3Bs.src%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fjoemaller.com%2FiTransmogrify-latest.js%3Fq%3D%27%2B%28new%20Date%29.getTime%28%29%3Bdocument.getElementsByTagName%28%27head%27%29%5B0%5D.appendChild%28s%29%7Dvoid%280%29

Instructions on how to install it are in the link.

Almost no flash implementations on the web would work anyway because they weren’t designed with a touch interface in mind. Think about how many hover effects Flash is used for. Anyway, Flash is completely unnecessary anyway. I’ve been using my iPhone for 6 months and I think there was one time that I encountered something in Flash that I wanted to see… and iTransmogrify handled that for me anyway.