Incredulous. There is a battle going on for popular media platforms Flash and the newer HTML5. The first thought that pops into my head is, “Ok, I understood the battle between HDDVD and Blu-Ray, because hardware unity across devices is extremely important. However I am struggling to see why Flash and HTML5 must go head to head, since your computer system and browser will support both with nothing more than a small plugin.”
Unless of course you own an Apple product, in which case Flash is now no longer available to you.
I am certainly not here to argue which platform should be used, since I support both platforms. My issue is with the reasons that flash has been taken away from users of the iPhone and iPad.
One reason was that Flash is not seen to be an “Open” platform for media. This means it’s owned corporately and is not moderated by a standards committee. HTML5, by the way, has standards control and is open, which means a third-party plugin is not required. This is all semantics. Mr. Jobs clearly does not understand that by banning flash, He has made his customers Apple experience less “open” than flash ever was. This difference nowadays between a built-in function and a third-party plugin is just a quick install and an end-user licence agreement. Something we are all very used to.
A second reason mentioned was about security and stability issues within Flash. I find this to be a preposterous reason to ban a popular media platform. Every piece of software has stability issues and security issues. even if they don’t, they must run along side systems that to this day have stability and security issues. So I object to this reason simply because it is completely irrelevant. What about Java? It’s far less stable than Flash!!
Thirdly, Mr. Jobs describes his company as leaving the past behind (Flash in other words.) Utter fabrication! HTML is older than Flash, gonna leave that behind too?
At the end of the day, I believe the choice should be made by the end-user. The customer that has paid a lot of money on a product and should be able to make an informed choice about what third-party software they use.
I now consider boycotting Apple as they have done to Adobe.
