Earlier this week Apple announced the iPad, in essence a larger version of the iPhone without the ability to make phone calls. I hypothesised about what form Apple’s tablet would take in my last post and whilst I correctly guessed a couple of the features of the new touch-sensitive handheld device, it was largely a given considering what other similar devices offer.
Flash! Argh!
Whilst many commented throughout and after Steve Jobs’ presentation that they were disappointed to see some features had been omitted such as a camera, true USB connectivity and a microphone, the lack of Flash support seems to have sparked the most debate.
Brendan Dawes, Creative Director at magneticNorth, quite eloquently put a case for why the web needs Flash and I agree with him. Whilst I generally loathe fully Flash websites there are on occassion inspirational websites that don’t break standard web conventions or jar usability but enhance them. Uniqlo are a good example of this.
Flash is like Comic Sans. Comic Sans is a fine font but it got overused and was used in inappropriate situations, much like Flash. This is a stigma that is hard to shake and I think Apple are leveraging this feeling as an excuse not to support it on their mobile devices, the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Rotten apples
I don’t think that the true reason behind Apple adding support for Flash is because of the bad feeling towards it and the concern of Flash websites dominating the mobile web. No. I think it’s largely a business move on Apple’s behalf.
The longer Apple hold out and don’t support Flash, whilst increasing their share of the mobile device market, it is inevitable that Flash will lose favour to pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript or Objective-C decreasing Adobe’s market share. As their market share declines as will their stock market value allowing Apple to buy out the company for a reduced price.
Of course this is all speculation. I’m not a lawyer nor a market analyst and so I don’t even know if it’s legal or possible for a company to have such an impact on another. You have to admit though, wouldn’t it be interesting if Apple did buy Adobe and what would happen to their respective products?
I felt the reason for Flash’s ommission on the iphone only boiled down to one thing. Money.
Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iphone because then it can’t control content, and ultimately take a slice of the pie. You could do completely without the Apple Store, and just download Flash content. It also means that you can competely change content from within the application (although this is coming more mainstream now that they allow downloadable content within games, and micro transactions).
Also, if you added Flash, you couldn’t completely sandbox applications I assume (another issue!)…
I think it would be more interesting to see SilverLight on the iPhone. This would never happen for all your reasons and mine, BUT, with Windows Mobile 7 being pretty much based on it from what I’ve heard, there would be a pretty seemless transition to get it onto one of the biggest (more talked about atleast) mobile phones in the market at the moment, and it’s big brother – the iPad.
I have to agree with Doug over Apples approach to Flash. If they are actively blocking it’s support for the iPhone and iPad I think it’s because it’s a rival to the app store and the content that is delivered through it.
I’ll agree with you too Scott that Flash is often misused. I’ve never liked it in most situations when used as the primary method used to create a website but for delivering highly interactive elements that are not fully supported via HTML and CSS then it certainly has it’s place and performs well. I think with some of the new technologies coming out Flash will have seen its peak already but I think it will still serve a purpose when delivering high level interaction.
In the case of Apple buying Adobe I’d really hope not. I can’t see how the consumer would benefit other than some potential new ideas coming from a new external source. Plus I’m not sure I could sit through an Apple presentation about Photoshop or Dreamweaver. It’s bad enough they feel we have to know about all the new features in iWork when that’s released.
I am suprised that Apple haven’t decided to make their own flash clone, or a wrapper for flash apps or something like that though.
Its also nice to see that Flash CS5 will introduce the ability to export into native Objective-C so you can publish to the app store :D