What’s Apple’s problem with Flash? Three years after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple’s refusal to include Flash on its soon-to-be-released iPad has sparked another kerfuffle between Apple and Flash maker Adobe Systems.
In a lengthy blog post, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch railed against Apple’s Flash avoidance and detailed why Flash has become successful on the non-iPhone part of the web. From its humble start allowing low-bandwidth vector animations on the web, Flash now includes animation, streaming audio, rich interactivity, arbitrary fonts, two-way audio/video communication, local storage, and “enabling the video revolution on the web,” Lynch wrote.
The explosion of smartphones and the imminent wave of tablet devices — including the iPad — means an “important crux for the future of Flash,” Lynch wrote. In the mobile near future, a plethora of devices with different web-browsing capabilities threatens to break up what Flash largely built — “seamless, consistent and rich experiences,” he added.
Flash for Smartphones
Adobe is attempting to manage the transition to the mobile web with a version of the Flash player for smartphones — which will be deployed by “all but one of the top manufacturers,” Lynch wrote.
Guess who that is.
Flash works just fine on Apple’s devices, Lynch wrote. Adobe is developing stand-alone apps built on Flash that are currently available on the App Store. “This same solution will work on the iPad as well. We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen,” Lynch charged.
HTML5 Won’t Replace Flash
Apple is a supporter of the open-standard HTML5, which it says will eventually replace Flash. Lynch doesn’t think so. “I don’t see this as one replacing the other, certainly not today nor…
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