Flash and the iPad
With the release of Apple’s iPad, the world wide web seems to have come to a crossroads. Adobe’s Flash, a long time resident of many web applications is not available on the iPad and this is causing quite a stir. Can an Internet browsing device survive without Flash? That’s the question being asked by anyone and everyone these days. Some say that Apple’s brand alone will change the landscape of the web. The iPad doesn’t need Flash. Any site worth viewing on the iPad doesn’t use Flash or is moving to HTML5’s video tag. Flash is a dead technology walking. Hold on a minute. Not so fast! Two pieces of the web make Flash an essential part of the browsing experience today, streaming video and video games.
On the streaming video front, the bloggers are correct, Adobe is being assaulted from multiple different angles and is doing little to stave off the competition. Microsoft’s Silverlight is by many accounts a significantly superior streaming video technology. Silverlight was chosen over Flash for Netflix’s Instant Watch technology and by NBC for the XXI Olympic Winter Games. HTML5’s video tag is currently in development by some of the largest streaming video providers on the web, such as YouTube.com and Hulu.com. Both of these advances in web technology threaten Flash as a video player with HTML5’s implementation probably having the larger future impact. HTML5 will supposedly work on all computers, with any OS be they desktops, netbooks, laptops, tablets (iPad included) or cell phones. Until HTML5 is finalized, Silverlight will continue to compete.
It’s the video game front where I think Flash truly shines and has very few competitors. At the very least, the competitors in this space are not as close to competing as they are on the video front. Silverlight will eventually be a competitor but it isn’t at this moment. Microsoft’s implementing COM+ support into Silverlight which should bring DirectX 2D/3D support to Windows computers. That does nothing for mobile clients and for the likes of the iPad but it represents competition. Google’s 3D support for WebGL is bringing 3D to the browser as well which should usher in a new era of video games built to be delivered by the browser. Until either of these technologies take off, Flash is where it is at. Very popular web properties make use of flash to deliver video games. Disney.com, Webkinz.com, MSN.com, Yahoo.com and more are all delivering Flash based games to millions of users.
An Apple iPad, sans Flash misses out on some of the best content on the web. The iPad is a casual Internet browsing device and cannot access a large portion of the world wide web. Some say that the iPad doesn’t need Flash. I say the iPad needs Flash and without it, will fail to get any real traction in the marketplace.
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5 Comments
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I think that the most powerful flash's rival in gaming is Unity. Not only does it give much better picture than any 3d flash-based engine can provide, it has great tools suited for both indie developers and larger companies and it has a unique cross-platform approach - you can publish your game both as a downloadable for PC or Mac, or you can build it as a web applet. It supports iPhone, too - but, obviously, iPhone versions need a little more tweaks than just choosing a different build option.
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This article fails to realize two things:
1.) The writer is not in the least bit the target for the iPad device.
2.) For gamers, the iPad arrives out-of-the-box with access to thousands and thousands of games built for the iPhone platform... most vastly superior than the typical Flash-built web game.
Flash is dead.
With the W3C (through standards), Apple (with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch), Microsoft (with Silverlight), and Google (by transitioned YouTube off the Flash platform) all committed to killing Flash, in the long run Adobe doesn't stand a chance of winning this battle.
And if your primary job skill is working as a Flash developer, I'd being picking up some other job skills now. I'd say we've got a 2 to 3 year window before that skill-set is marginalized.
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@Chris,
While I can understand your points on Flash video, Flash isn't just a video delivery platform. If it were then it would have been dead a while ago because Silverlight is better at this function in every single way. Flash, however, does provide a large platform for casual game development. Disney.com, PopCap.com, WebKins, Poptropica.com and many more sites are all implemented using Flash. They are all inaccessible to the iPad and unless Apple changes its stance on things, these sites will never be part of the iPad experience. Flash is not dead. Flash may very well be the last browser plugin to be installed in 95%+ of all computers but that very statistic is the reason why Flash will not die for quite some time.
As to the quality of said games in Flash versus native iPhone OS apps, I'll leave that one alone because it's completely speculative and personal. Many people I have spoken with have declared the iPad as something that they will not purchase because a netbook is more capable and costs about the same. Oh, and the netbook can have multiple browsers installed. It can access those Flash based web sites. It runs MS Office. Basically, the negatives of the iPad do not outwiegh the touch screen goodness of the device in that form factor. As with most electronics, we'll see how the market reacts but in my experience, an Internet experience on a large screen without Flash is an Internet experience that is decidedly lacking. It's tollerable on a phone or a MP3 player but not on a device with a screen large enough to utilize the site.
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Remember when you sad iPad won't majestic any traction in the market place because it doesn't have flash lol. It's over a ear Katerina ad you just sound dumb. Fail
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I'm fully willing to admit when I am wrong. The iPad has been a great device for Apple. I still think the lack of Flash is a shortcoming of the device and of iOS in particular. That said, I was wrong because noone has come to the market with a viable competitor to the device that also includes Flash. Flash is still very much a part of the overall web experience and with Google decision to drop x.264 support in favor of WebM it will remain so.
That said, I barely understood your reply except to know that you were meaning to insult me in some way. If only you would have had the nerve to post under a real name with a link to your blog instead of posting anonymously.
2.01.2010 at 6:47 PM