Is Apple looking to SVG as a Flash replacement for the iPhone?
27 CommentsPublished March 5th, 2008 1:55 PM EST By Daniel Goldman
Yesterday’s comments by Apple’s Steve Jobs about the iPhone and Flash left many scratching their heads. The iPhone won’t be adding support for Flash, saying it ‘simply isn’t good enough for [the] Apple iPhone.’
Many are speculating about the alternative options for the iPhone. After all, most games and video on the Web require Adobe’s Flash. Apple simply can’t ignore that (or could they?).
Robert Scoble blogged about a rumor saying that Apple is working on adding support for SVG to the iPhone. This would certainly be an interesting and positive thing for the Web.
SVG, which stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, is an open W3C Standard (unlike the proprietary Adobe Flash). One of the biggest advantages to using SVG is that it automatically scales to any size. Enlarging an SVG image (or animation) doesn’t degrade its quality, unlike with JPEG, PNG and other image formats.
SVG is currently popular for applications in mobile phones and other devices. Perhaps the Apple iPhone will have the star power to get SVG widely used on the Web. SVG is already supported by Opera, Firefox and Safari.
The iPhone already brought lots of positive awareness to the mobile Web; perhaps it could do the same with SVG. I certainly hope so.
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SVG is *not* flash. Steve Jobs wants to keep full control of the iPhone and decide who needs what but this whole thing is ridiculous.
Let’s go back in time when Steve Jobs said that a SDK won’t be necessary and that they have already better solutions…
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Thank God! No, SVG isn’t flash, that’s the point. Flash sucks, it’s bad for the web and just pisses users off. I’m hoping this kick starts something new.
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I don’t have anything against SVG but to this day, SVG doesn’t have any interactive abilities, neither any abilities to stream video and stream audio.
I haven’t seen SVG anywhere except wikipedia so far, not sure how the iphone will change all of that.
Actually not supporting flash on the iPhone is probably rather an attempt to push quicktime rather than SVG.
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Steve wants sites to use QuickTime
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@CadErik, you obviously haven’t really looked at SVG, see how broad the spectrum of SVG use is at svg.startpagina.nl
In the last few years Apple has picked up quite some SVG experts and it shows in the important Webkit and probably soon a lot more. They should be part of SVG Open, the world conference too
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Hopefully Silverlight will convolute matters even further and stimulate more urgency for proper media web standards.
I mean, if flash can do this (http://www.jacksonsofpiccadilly.co.uk/main.htm) to you, then it should be banned for all eternity. How irritating is that site? Jesus! It makes me want to tear my hair out. The text is infinitessimally small and you (I) can’t even zoom in on it, and this a with a pretty low DPI screen.
It’s not all about youtube you know…the whole web is infected.
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“The iPhone won’t be adding support for Flash, saying it ‘simply isn’t good enough for [the] Apple iPhone.”
This is untrue. The Dow Jones story makes it hard to understand, but what was actually said was that Flash Lite and the other mobile implementations of Flash were not good enough for the iPhone. Presumably because Apple are pushing the idea that the iPhone renders just like a real computer, and that if they were to implement Flash, it’d have to be the real Flash. And currently that’s unfeasible due to Adobe not having a light, “real” version of Flash.
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@CadErik – SVG is capable of everything you listed it can’t do -http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/08/svg-video-demo.html
SVG would be much more popular if it weren’t for IE’s lack of support. I don’t think IE will ever have good support since it conflicts with its Silverlight plans.
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Silverlight plans?
Silverlight will die a slow death.
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Hey Bob, Flash didn’t design that site itself so how about blaming the designer of that site for any design flaws instead of blaming Flash. There will always be examples of poor design no matter what tools are used by the designer whether it is Flash, SVG, Silverlight or anything else.
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Courtney Miles, I liked your link. Thanks for sharing.
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The word I have most trouble with here is “Always”…*shudder*. The fact is it’s always much easier to mess around with irritatingly slow and fancy menu systems with flash, and it is especially good at taking away control from the mouse. When I see the words About Adobe Flash Player 9, I want to mash the keyboard with my head. I didn’t ask anyone about flash, I want to right click on the sodding page.
Most rubbish websites contain flash, and most irritatingly the classic Flash Screen.
If SVG gets a bit rubbish, it will be changed, but with flash, Adobe can do whatever sins they wish on the web.
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The new Nokia N96 has full Flash support, not just the Lite version. (BTW, Nokia Internet Tablets also have full Flash.)
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Don’t get fooled by SJobs. He is the same guy who said Java (J2ME) is a security risk.
If you are harrassed by Flash ads, pick the sites you browse better. Flash is the de facto standard for multimedia on Web. The sites you call “rubbish” could be top 10-100 sites on web or their functionality could be very important for some people. Not supporting a thing just because it hurts your nerd feelings is very Mozilla like attitude.
SVG has no commercial use for now, people buying a browser or a expensive PDA expects to have all features (including real youtube). Opera’s and Nokia’s (N96) decision to support flash is the right thing, Apple is just very afraid of the insane multimedia and commercial abilities of Flash. Imagine having a Flash music store on iPhone. That is why Apple didn’t put Java and Flash to iPhone.
If I was Sun Inc. I would sue Apple for distributing false information about Java as well as Adobe should about Flash. My E65 (Nokia) shows Flash lite fine, I am expecting Flash Lite 3 with Opera 9.5 Mobile.
SVG? Nokia Phone UI is actually SVG. Everything has their places as Nokia or Opera aren’t afraid of anyone actually get rid of their locked music store
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Steve Jobs is an arrogant person. First he was against Java: “Java already born dead”. Now he are saying that Flash is not good enough for iPhone?
I think that iPhone IS NOT good enough for us.
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Apple could pick the CPU N96 uses and Flash being CPU intensive would be non issue. J2ME is bad? Put real Java Desktop inside it. That device (iPhone) is not a cheap PDA, it is a luxury device running a stripped down but real OS X with high end 2D acceleration (via opengl) technology.
Flash using too much CPU is a reality on OS X. It is up to Apple to ask “Your plugin runs in my browser thread and I am getting negative feedback from users, how do you manage to use 90% CPU? Don’t you use (whatever) feature?” instead of distorting the reality to validate their commercial reasoning behind not putting flash inside a $3000 PDA.
As an end user, I mailed Adobe several times to put an end to wrong permissions problem, use acceleration, use CPU features as Altivec/SSE.
I am sure people at Opera watching every single tick of CPU on their own code are also sick of the flash plugin hogging the CPU and putting blame on browser too but they don’t use it as excuse to lock down their users.
The issue with any browser plugin is: Non technical users will see Safari/Opera use 90% CPU and flooding memory on a basic site. The real issue in 99% of times: Plugin and even Extension in Mozilla case. The plugin runs in browsers thread and non technical sees Opera/Safari use 90% CPU, blames browser. It is same thing happening since first browser plugin released. Nobody will mail Adobe as “Your plugin running in Thread 2 kills my CPU”, instead they mail browser vendor blaming the browser.
Anyway, if SVG could be used as a complete iTunes store replacement, it would be “SVG is too bad”, that is my point. No way to prove of course.
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Again, bob, how Flash or any design or development tool or platform is used on a site- any site- is up to the designer of that site, not Flash itself. If you have some sort of freaky predjudice against Flash, then that’s your business but to blame Flash for something that is the designer’s fault is wrong.
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Nope. It is a standard MS paid lots of money to major websites, so they are going to use it as a main content platform. You’ll have to use SL or not see a content.
SL has a VERY important bonus of total .NET integration, that makes it accessible for ALL current C# programmers, thus making it accessible to 100s more times more people than action script and flash in general. Simply put, it is VERY simple to write and deploy Silverlight application.
Yes, it does not work with Opera(ver 2.o compatiblity isnt confirmed) and Safari (ver 2.0 should work), but all other 99% users can see it no problem.
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It would be great to see a company like Apple pushing SVG. Flash is a bad solution because it’s only available as a plugin with no chance of getting a native implementation in any browser in the near future. And sometime this year we will see a ridiculous format war between Flash and Silverlight.
From an technical point of view the best solution would be to have SVG for vector graphics and a free video codec like Theora standardized as part of HTML5 for playing video on the web.
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If Flash wasn’t that buggy and slow and ugly on Linux one could might even consider using it.
On the other hand, it’s main purpose now is playing videos, but with HTML5 we will get video support and hence the purpose of Flash is also vanishing (so I hope atleast).
With HTML5 and SVG there are very few places where Flash might be more suitable.
Bad thing is – Flash is owned by Adobe, so is the only working SVG Plugin for the IE. So it really depends on Adobe in pushing SVG and promoting it more – but this would contradict their Flex plans. Very tough times..
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latest news – Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 DOES NOT work with Opera.
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I don’t even get why MS already releases Silverlight 2.0 in the near future.
the first version came out just a few months ago and at the moment there aren’t even that many websites that are making used of it – and now they’re already releasing the second version?
This is just strange…
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why? SL 1.0 was a ‘beta’. Real stable beta. They’ve gathered feedback and they are releasing ‘final’ – SL 2.0 + .net 3 + VS2008.
btw. there arent that many users using Opera, and they are working on another version? (’many’ is relative term.. just to point it out)
In our company there is a guy who is responsible for SL evaluation and he is very enthusiastic about it. Most probably parts of our main user interface (advanced search with lots and lots of JS logic and AJAX stuff) will be rewritten into SL 2.0. Cutting Opera users out, but.. well, tough luck. I don’t personaly like it, but from business point of view loosing 1% is offset by MUCH easier code management, greatly reducing deploynment times and costs. Most companies prefer to better serve that 99% than serving that last 1% at all.
PS. Silverlight 2.0 compatibility with Opera was promised long ago. By Opera. So how is it?
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Stop trolling, Microsoft fanboy. This is a post about Flash and SVG, not your love for everything Microsoft.
What are you, the Microsoft equivalent of w2?
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Nystor, there are a few remaining Silverlight bugs to be fixed in Opera side.
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Daniel,
you definitely make a good argument. But you should not forget about the <canvas> tag which is JavaScript powered. Proof of Apple’s dedication to the canvas tag can be found in the massive amount of energy they put into making JavaScript run faster on Safari.
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For all those who say YouTube access requires Flash completely fail to realise the iPhone already has that and does it without Flash so the comments are moot.I would side with SVG on the basis of it being totally open standard, supported fully by the very people who set the standards for web development (W3C) and has the potential to be supported on a platform that is rapidly making huge inroads into changing the way that we interact with the Net on a mobile basis.Flash is so poor on the current range of cellphones that it’s not even worth using.