Kontra

Flash versus Open

Perhaps one thing we can all agree on is that the future of the web, mobile or otherwise, will be more or less open. That would be HTML, MP3, H.264, HE-AAC, and so on. These are not proprietary Adobe products, they are open standards…unlike Flash.

In confusing codecs with UI, Wilson keeps asking, “why is it tha[t] most streaming audio and video on the web comes through flash players and not html5 based players?” The answer is rather pedestrian: HTML5 is just ramping up, but Flash IDE has been around for many years. Selling Flash IDE and back-end server tools has been a commercial focus for Adobe, while Apple, for example, hasn’t paid much attention to QuickTime technologies and promotion in ages. It’s thus reflected in adoption patterns.

Hopefully, this summary will clear Wilson’s blind spot:

Apple is betting on open technologies (as it makes money on hardware) while Adobe (which only sells software) is betting on wrapping up content in a proprietary shackle called Flash.

From:

Does "A VC" have a blind spot for Apple? http://counternotions.com/2009/02/16/open/

  "I don't want to create iPhone-specific apps with Flash (yet!)."

  "All multi-touch does in Safari is zoom!"

This is a movie we've seen before. You could give the same example with friends sending you links for stuff buried in Active X containers in IE that no other non-Windows browser could properly render. What happened? MS has gradually abandoned Active X, and much of what Active X could do can now be done via non-proprietary browser technologies. The scenario won't be so different for Flash. Nothing will be black and white, but that's the trend.

"With WebKit 3.0, will/does SVG have a drawing API as powerful as that of Flash? If not now, when?"

No it doesn't. The point you might be missing is that a huge portion of apps/sites that currently use Flash in fact don't need to. I'm not saying Flash/Flex/AIR have no place on the webscape. I'm saying that an awful lot of stuff that could only be done via Flash in the past, don't have to use it any longer. And that's an upward trend.

"...as there is no way to use multi-touch and Flash on your computer screen today either."

And that's one of the principal points: Flash is yesteryear's technology.

"How this affects coherency on the iPhone is up for debate"

What's there to debate? Flash doesn't support multi-touch, iPhone runs on it.

"I don't think Flash's lack of multi-touch should restrict me from using stormpulse from my iPhone."

I have written another article:

Runtime wars (2): Apple's answer to Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX

http://counternotions.com/2007/11/15/apple-runtime-answer-2/

wherein I explain how emerging standard technologies are essentially rendering most (not all) of Flash's advantages moot. Actually, since I wrote that article, advances in JavaScript, canvas, CSS animation, etc., have been pouring in at an astounding pace.

So most (not all) folks out there will take a harder look and see if they can easily do now with HTML5 what they could only do with Flash yesterday. Apple, like Google, is riding on that wave.

"the ability for a Flash application to appear consistent across platforms"

If you read the blog article linked above (I am the author) you will see that Flash doesn't even have a native multi-touch framework, thereby making that "consistent across platforms" promise hollow on the iPhone and other similar devices to come. I think you'll find useful pointers in that article as to why Apple can't and won't just let Flash ruin iPhone's user experience coherency, both strategically and tactically.