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iPad and Flash

By: Simon
Updated:
Jun 16, 2010
Posted: Apr 6, 2010

You know it’s awesome and I know it’s awesome.

We’ve all been waiting and waiting and it finally arrived. The iPad to much fan fare landed in the very touchy feely hands of Mac fans across America. I have read a couple of reviews see below:

“The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic iPod Touch,” wrote David Pogue, the New York Times technology reviewer. “The simple act of making the multitouch screen bigger changes the whole experience.” He said, “Driving simulators fill more of your field of view, closer to a windshield than a keyhole.”

Mr. Pogue thought technophiles would be unimpressed: “The bottom line is that you can get a laptop for much less money — with a full keyboard, DVD drive, U.S.B. jacks, camera-card slot, camera, the works. Besides: If you’ve already got a laptop and a smartphone, who’s going to carry around a third machine?” – The New York Times

“Currently, there is a web standard called Flash, developed by a company named Adobe, which allows for the easy insertion of rich media into webpages. That’s everything from streaming video and audio files, online gaming, to entire websites made using its broad and deep development tools. The penetration percentage for Flash on PCs around the world is something like 98 — that’s almost everyone — and many, many sites employ the standard on their pages. When we say many, we mean most if not all of the pages you typically visit use Flash to display some of their content. The iPad browser doesn’t support Flash, and won’t support Flash, perhaps ever.” Engadget

Ok it’s not all bad especially if you spend most your time consuming content. If you are buying the iPad to consume and not create then your set. I don’t have the time or patience to try to use a product that does not support a standard like flash. At least not yet. I will eventually cave.

I have been investigating remote desktop solutions for flash i.e. use on the iPad to watch videos. To be honest that’s my second reason for wanting flash to work on the iPad and first being web development / design. It kind of bothers me that Apple would put the iTunes store before users like me. Users that have have supported with purchases even in the bad times.

All things considered the iPad is an amazing creation. No one can deny that and it will probably at the least drive consumers to usage patterns different from that of laptops.

Will iPad kill laptops? Not yet.

Other references:

http://simonwebdesign.com/steve-jobs-html5-will-kill-flash/

Simon Urbina

Simon Urbina

Simon is a Product Designer and Front End Dev with over 20 years of experience. He started as a graphic designer and illustrator coding his first website in 1996. He has worked with brands like Publix, Microsoft, and Discovery Channel.