Today was the start of Adobe’s Max Developer Conference and the big announcement from the conference so far is an enhancement to their Adobe Flash Platform that will allow their player to work on smartphones, smartbooks, netbooks, PC’s and other Internet connected devices. You can see the official press release from Adobe here. A public beta will be available later this year and will be available for Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, and all the major desktop OS’s with Android, Symbian, and RIM are all expected to be available at a later date as well.

As you can tell the list of vendors jumping on board to support the initiative is pretty broad, but Apple is no where to be found, which is perfectly fine by me but more on that in a minute. I think we need to look at why Apple is so hesitant to allow Flash on to the iPhone. Once they allow Flash on the iPhone Apple would be giving developers a way around their AppStore Cash Cow. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal for utility type applications because the user experience would not be the same (Flash apps would probably not be allowed to have an icon on the main menu system), this could be a big blow to Apple since they are marketing the iPhone as a gaming platform. If the iPhone had Flash that can take advantage of the accelerated graphics and video, why would developers create a game that is specific just for the iPhone and go through the Apple approval process?

On the other side I think more and more iPhone users are starting to get used to life without Flash, which makes you wonder how necessary it really is. Based on my usage, I really don’t see a need for Flash anymore and I hope it never comes to the iPhone. I visit more and more sites each day that just created a mobile or iPhone version of their site that works great without Flash. I find that most sites that I visit use Flash for either navigation or ads which can easily be replaced with a non-flash version of the site that performs better and does not eat up system resources. The only real use I could see for Flash would be for streaming such as video from Hulu, but I would rather see that implemented as a native app that is feature rich and not in the browser.

So where do you stand when it comes to Flash support on the iPhone?

Leave your comment below.

So now that all the new sexy hardware and software has been announced, we can now focus on what was not announced for the new iPhone 3GS:

Same Case/Body – The biggest thing that wasn’t announced for me was a redesign of the case.  I was really hoping that Apple would have moved to a soft back like the Storm has.  While I have already added my own case to provide that, it would be nice if it was built in

No glowing Apple logo – I am so glad this rumor is not true!  I could not imagine having something as silly as a glowing logo on my phone, and lets not even get started on how that would affect the battery.

No screen improvements – I was really looking forward to some improvements to the screen as this could have helped with some of the battery issues, but maybe they are holding this back for the next version

No color selection - No big loss here thanks to skins and cases, but I am sure some people would have liked to have the iPhone in various colors

No Verizon deal – Looks like we will have to continue to wait to see if the iPhone eventually lands with Verizon.  Based on what I have read so far today, there are a lot of Apple fans who are just flat out pissed with AT&T right now, so it will be interesting to see what happens here

No camera flash, or front facing camera – I have a feeling this will stay on the wish list for a lot.  I think we would see a front facing camera before a flash, but no one really knows

Adobe Flash support – I think for this one we can blame Adobe, but again we will have to wait and see.  The nice thing about this feature is they can add this through a software update.

Wireless N – Another nice to have and I assume this will be in the next revision.

What feature do you really wish they would have announced?