Runtime wars (1): Does Apple have an answer to Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX?

Adobe’s got Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and Sun JavaFX. What does Apple have in this multimedia runtime war of information and entertainment delivery?

On the surface, nothing. Some might argue that QuickTime is already the answer; Flash and Silverlight are finally catching up. Further, if Apple can convince Google’s YouTube to re-encode their video inventory in QuickTime’s primary codec H.264/AVC and if the new Flash player will also feature the industry standard H.264, why bother with anything else?

Because more than just video is at stake here. Surely, both Silverlight and the latest Flash offer high-resolution video, but they also deliver (rich media) applications.

Adobe Flash

Adobe, for example, can deliver the core of a reasonably non-trivial application targeting Flash runtime intact across platforms to web browsers (Flex), desktop (AIR) and even mobile devices (Flash Lite). Ditto, eventually, for Silverlight and JavaFX.

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft’s Silverlight can not only play HD 720p video but also includes CoreCLR, the .NET Common Language Runtime, so that applications can be written in any .NET language and run on Windows, Mac OS X and soon Linux. While Silverlight can be seen as an extension of Windows Presentation Foundation, a .NET 3.0 layer, it also supports fast compiled/just-in-time JavaScript and Ruby, Python and VBx.

Sun JavaFX

Not to be outdone by Adobe and Microsoft, Sun recently introduced JavaFX, JavaFX Script, JavaFX Mobile. Based on Java, these technologies cover nearly the same domain as Flash and Silverlight.

Powerful runtimes

This new breed of network-aware platforms are capable of interacting with remote application servers and databases, parsing and emitting XML, crunching client-side scripts, rendering complex multimedia layouts, running animations, displaying vector graphics and overlaid videos, using sophisticated interface controls and pretty much anything desktop applications are able to do.

It is said that Adobe bought Macromedia to acquire Flash, whose runtime is likely the most ubiquitous plugin on the web. Fairly effortless to upgrade, the Flash runtime is a tremendous asset for Adobe and Flash/Flex/AIR developers to distribute their rich media applications.

Indeed the absence of Flash on the iPhone has been one of its most talked about shortcomings. Everyone expects Flash to arrive soon. Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital had said in July that the iPhone Flash plugin was imminent:

Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update, which I am guessing will occur within the next couple of months.

Yet four months and a couple of updates later, there’s no Flash support. Nor any support for Silverlight or JavaFX on any of Apple’s post-PC devices: AppleTV, iPhone and iPod touch. Is there more than the current absence of an SDK involved here? Mere Apple secrecy? NIMBY? Is Apple satisfied by merely having them on Mac OS X and not worried about its post-PC devices? Or does Apple have something up its corporate sleeve to counter this tsunami of powerful cross-platform runtimes?