There has been an interesting Meme developing on the Net this week with the release of the iPad. The iPad, like the iPhone, does not support Flash. So many folks are wondering why not, and what does this mean?
Gina over at Lifehacker and Smarterware has notice a big increase in browsers that don't support Flash. This seems to make sense given the rise of Smart phones and such in our daily lives.
So who is the hitman gunning for Flash? HTML 5 apparently. This post, written by Bex Huff a few months ago, is a good summary of how HTML 5 could do the deed. With HTML 5 having built in support for audio, video, and vector graphics, it can do all that Flash can do now. And given it is an open standard, there would be a lot of opportunity to develop authoring tools like Adobe's.
So why won't Apple put Flash on its mobile OS? Well the main reason is Steve Job's doesn't like it. According to Wired's Epicenter blog, a day or two after the iPad announcement, Apple had a company meeting to celebrate the launch. As is normal at these events, the CEO takes questions of employees. Here are some of his comments about Adobe paraphrased.
They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML 5.That seems to be a pretty strong endorsement of HTML 5 from Mr Jobs. In addition, according to the FanBoy blog, Adobe will not make the effort to build a bridge between the two companies.
So, don't expect to see Flash on the iPad or iPhone. With Google and Vimeo announcing support for HTML 5 video, Apple may not need flash.
