On April 3rd the much hyped iPad will hit the market. Wall Street predicts Apple will sell 4-5 million of them in the first year. Those less enthused say no one has had much success with tablet devices and Apple will only fare slightly better. But the biggest debate has been around the iPad’s total lack of Flash support.
Apple claims Flash is old, buggy and a battery hog. They called Adobe “lazy”. Apple critics claim Apple just wants to control the user experience by forcing people into the iTunes store so they can make money. They call Apple “control freaks”.
Whatever the case, the facts are crystal clear. The iPad does not…and will likely never…support Flash. And the overwhelming majority of multi-media content on the web is Flash.
Flash is the Achille’s heal of the iPad. And Adobe and HP have just gone straight after it with the unexpected preview of the HP Slate. What is it? It’s a tablet device about the same size as the iPad. It has a touch screen. It runs Windows 7. And it fully supports Flash.
In fact, the main focus of the HP Slate announcement was Flash, Flash and Flash. Unfortunately for HP, the Slate won’t be available until later this year. That gives Apple the advantage because the iPad will be available in a few weeks. But really the purpose of HP’s announcement was to make potential iPad buyer’s pause and think before laying their money down.
And if you watch their videos below, I think they may have succeeded in doing just that (even if they did go a bit overboard about Flash):
Oooo, I think I saw some hulu interactivity there. Great news!
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
I don’t know if I agree that Adobe is “lazy” but I do agree the Jobs is a bona-fide visionary and when he rolled out the MAC that did not come with a floppy, the industry said he was nuts, so there ya go.
I also hear that HTML 5 will play video quite nicely thank you, so there ya go again. As the Zen Master says “We shall see”
@Social Media: I use both Mac’s and PC’s equally, so I’m neutral. But here’s a benchmark test that was run for Flash vs. HTML5. Basically, Flash is fine on anything other than the Mac OS with Safari:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/10/flash_html_5_comparison_finds_neither_has_performance_advantage.html
I agree that the lack of Flash is a terrible flaw and live in hope that a better tablet will emerge.
But even if one does, iPad still has an almost insurmountable advantage in the enormous body of great Apps. There are several I’d hate to go without and I doubt their equal will be available for years on some other platform.