Zynga Launches the Farmville iPhone App
With the launch of the new iPhone 4 comes an interesting app from social networking game developer Zynga, Farmville.
This is not a new game at all, in fact the virtual farming app has been around for quite some time and has addicted millions of Facebook users into playing the Flash based browser game for hours on end. Many experts estimate that hundreds of hours each week are lost to productivity thanks to games like Farmville, with the very game itself taking a sizable chunk of that value.
The need for a special iPhone app is due to the fact that the Apple handset does not support Flash. While it may be surprising for some that a such a high end and impressive smart phone such as the iPhone does not support something as simple as Flash, the issue actually lies with Steve Jobs’ refusal to find a way for the iPhone OS to support Flash and provide a stable performance.
In any case, many pointed out Facebook’s game apps as a major feature that Apple is passing up with their lack of Flash support. The earlier announcement that Zynga is making a special app for Farmville means that 8 million of its users will no longer have to shy away from the smart phone –surely a small victory for the Flash hating handset.
The issue with Flash however, still remains. Even if Zynga has made a special app for Farmville, that still leaves a vast majority on online content that would need specialized iPhone app conversions, and not every site is going to re-do Flash content just to be compatible with the Apple operating system.
Going back to Farmville, Zynga has announced that they will also be implanting new gameplay additions to the touch screen based user interface of the iPhone in order to change the way harvesting is done and also added in a few special iPhone-exclusive items as well.
