Dawn of the New Decade

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Steve Jobs banishes Flash from the world
(15 votes, average: 4.53 out of 5)
Josh Sklar
Founder/Heresiarch, Heresy
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Steve Jobs turned and spoke unto the world saying, “Consume the iPad, for it is magical.” Mr. Jobs may be sliding slowly into a parody of his showman self with his proclamations and choice of non-choice adjectives, but he never fails when he wants to make a statement. The declaration he made that carried the most interest for me when he launched the iPad was the one between the hyperbole, but obvious nonetheless: Apple is absolutely turning its back on Flash and therefore dislodging it from the heights Macromedia built it to where it was pre-installed on over 99% of all platforms (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html), to where Adobe usually takes strong products if left on their own.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch or iDunno, something from Apple that runs iPhone OS X, you know that Flash does not run on it. What we get instead is that friendly, “We’re working on it!” message, which for an Apple person is a little strange. I mean, Flash really fits the whole Apple vibe really well and it was those crazy designer/arty types that forced the animation to live all over the Web. True geeks constantly bemoan how obnoxious Flash is in that it doesn’t conform to the Web’s environment where things are conveniently indexed, searchable, bookmarked, and integrated into other code. Yeah, they generally blame “those Apple morans (sic).”

So it’s surprising. In fact, in early 2008, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said they were going to develop a Flash player for the iPhone/iPod touch “with or without Apple’s blessing.” I guess they’re still working out the bugs, huh? He went on all those two years ago (you know, Internet years means x8) to boast, “Flash is synonymous with the Internet and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the Web and experience the Web’s glory really needs Flash support.” Well, hey, what else are you going to say after you spent US$3.4 billion to buy the thing?

The truth is, things are changing quickly. Forget that “Web 2.0” nonsense. Behold HTML v.5.0! As the underlying structure of all Web pages, the mark-up language has become very sophisticated and is being built with the actual modern use of the Internet in mind. Because YouTube uses the Flash video player it has the honor of being the largest user of Flash in the world, but they (http://www.youtube.com/html5), Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/blog:268), and Google Applications, to name a few, now all have non-Flash versions of video players and programs, and everything is built without the need for plug-ins through the capabilities of HTML v.5.0.

It’s much better for Apple because now they’re not beholden to yet another company. They gave the community of developers of their infamous “apps” their own SDK (software development kit) that does what they would’ve needed Flash to do in reaching out to the Internet. All in all, it seems like a very nice evolution into a more nimble world, but like the elimination of computer diskettes, it’s taking a bold, some might say premature, move by Jobs to force the world to go the direction he believes is the right way. If you think I’m reading too much into this, just listen to Steve’s own famously acerbic words: “Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. 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 HTML5.” Are you ready? It means you’ll have to trade in your “Flash for Dummies” book for an “HTML5 for n00bs.”