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The version of Safari running on Apple’s iPhone shows the web without Flash, Windows Media, Real Player, or Java applets. It’s not just a case of few plugins gone missing. Here’s why Apple chose to cut proprietary content from the web, and what it means for Adobe, Sun, Microsoft, Real, and other mobile makers.
Apple's ongoing web strategy seems to have no respect for Adobe’s Flash, which is currently in wide use to add animations to web pages. Flash is sometimes even required to view certain poorly-conceived web sites.
Flash is also commonly used to provide a lowest-common denominator for delivering web video. Flash video is encoded using a proprietary codec licensed from On2 and served on the web via a Flash-based controller. Google's YouTube uses Flash in this manner.
Apple recently convinced Google to start offering its YouTube videos in an H.264 format that can be accessed by both the iPhone and Apple TV. The obvious reason for moving to H.264 video rather than using Flash is that Flash requires decoding the video on a general purpose CPU using the Flash/On2 software codec.
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