Rob Ford: “Will iDevices be left in a wilderness and possibly be the only devices not to support Flash?”
Rob Ford (the man behind the one of the industry’s most coveted web awards site TheFWA.com) started an interesting discussion on LinkedIn this morning. With all the exciting announcements coming out of CES (blog post with my favorites coming later today) he asks if the iPhone and iPad will be left in a wilderness and possibly be the only devices not to support Flash?
Rob Ford: “Tablets look set to hog the headlines at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Industry watchers expect 100 or more of the portable gadgets to be shown off at the four-day technology extravaganza.”
It seems that one key feature people look for with a new tablet is the ability to run Flash, I know I certainly do.
It also seems that every tablet coming to the market does.
So, will the iPhone and iPad be left in a wilderness and possibly be the only devices not to support Flash?
Flash on mobile is still incredibly new and we are still waiting to see exciting new mobile optimised content. We are pretty much back at Flash 2/3 in terms of the web. To illustrate that point, look at these old Flash sites on your Flash enabled smartphone or tablet, they all work perfectly:
Gabocorp http://www.thefwa.com/flash10/1996_7.html 1997
EYE4U http://www.eye4u.com/home/ 1998
NRG.be http://www.nrg.be/archived/flash.php 1998
Matinee http://www.matinee.co.uk/site2/fr_nmd.htm 1998
Who’s We Studios http://www.whoswestudios.com/flashsite.html 2002
tokyoplastic http://www.tokyoplastic.com/tokyoplastic1.swf 2003
Agencies are definitely working with Flash and AIR for mobile as we speak.
The iPhone is my most used device but I miss the lack of Flash. A friend of mine who is outside of this industry recently told me the only time he fires up his laptop is when he tries to access a site on his iPhone that requires Flash.
I am still looking at tablets but will only buy one that does support Flash.
I also feel the app store is a “boys club” network, especially after publishing an iPhone app for FWA Photo. It was a long and painful process and aftersales was useless. I prefer the freedom the web gave us and hate to see it taken away.
I believe that 2011 will see many of us moving away from the need for Flash on Apple’s devices. All that energy wasted on trying to change Apple’s stance is better focused on getting creative on devices that work.
I don’t want to hijack Rob’s discussion so I closed the comments on this post. You can share your thoughts on Rob’s LinkedIn discussion thread.
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