Well, it’s time for me to put together what exactly I think about Apple and Flash. Which means it’s time for a blog post.
Just a little background: Apple has made the strategic decision of not supporting Adobe’s Flash multimedia platform. Flash is a proprietary platform that has gained a sort of lingua franca status among browsers, web developers, and so forth–it is very widely used, and Adobe claims that 98% of web users in the United States have the software installed.
IPods never did support flash, but all of a sudden this became a bigger deal because of the launch of the iPad. Tons of people are getting these gizmos–users want Flash, because of YouTube and web video mainly, and of course, Adobe wants its platform in front of all these eyeballs.
Now, we all know that Apple and Steve Jobs are trying to take over the world. Jobs is in the dictionary next to “my way or the highway.” Jobs’s Thoughts on Flash memo is basically like “you suck and need to die, Adobe.” Adobe was not happy, but they launched a happily ridiculous ad campaign saying it “loves Apple.” It reminded me of one of those creepy gothic sidekicks that goes around saying “yessssss master, how can I help you master” whenever the Count kicks him or does something else abusive to it.
As much as it pains me to say this, I think Jobs is right. His memo makes perfect sense. Flash will most likely die a mouldering death when HTML5 comes of age. But the fact that these two corporations are going back and forth about how “open” and “free-flowing” everything is borderline insulting to all of our intelligence. Puh-lease. They want money more customers and higher stock prices.
But being right in your assessment of future trends doesn’t mean you to pick this fight. Why not support Flash for as long as it’s around? That would, as well as making Apple look friendly in the marketplace, also serve its customers by you know, giving them things to do on their fancy new hardware. Additionally, it wouldn’t give Google’s droid phone that marketing advantage. My prediction is that Apple’s attitude of “you’re technology is out of date, screw you and we, being visionary, don’t care if that inconveniences our customers” will not end well for Apple.