Mobile Devices, Advancing Technology, and the Web

A friend recently posted a blog entry in favor of Flash on the iPad. She argued, as others have, that not supporting Flash is, in effect, censoring the Internet.

Sure, Apple is right that they aren't required to provide access to the entire Internet. And people are right to question Adobe elevating Flash to a position alongside html, CSS, js and other web standards.

She goes on to blame Apple for not being able to see certain content on an iPad.

It doesn't matter what I miss or don't miss (but Java sadly has not gone away. Le sigh). It doesn't matter what we can do with Web standards (and please do remember that HTML5 is NOT complete, even if its close). It matters that large amounts of Web content RIGHT NOW is built in Flash and I can't see it if I want to use an iPad.

So I would much prefer people rewrote their content to standards, true. But wishing Flash didn't exist doesn't make it all go away.

There are a few problems here. To say that Apple is censoring the Internet is to imply that Apple is blocking content. Flash should not be considered content. The Flash player is a plugin for rendering content. Like a Web browser renders content. The advantage of Flash has always been twofold:

1. It had the ability to render more types of content than Web browsers did natively. Flash became indispensable for consistently delivering audio and video content to the widest range of users.
2. There is only one official implementation of the Flash player, so developers don't have to worry about cross-platform discrepancies.

Web developers have always had options other than Flash for making their content available. In refusing to support Flash, Apple is simply removing one, admittedly popular, option. There are other ways to deliver video, but no one mourns the lack of Real Player support on the iPad. Why? Because there are better ways to deliver video. The same applies to audio. People get along just fine without Windows Media Player. There are still websites that use Java applets to deliver content. Not because it is the best way to do it, but because that's how they've always done it. When it comes right down to it, Web developers and content providers determine what content you can and cannot see.

When iPhone OS debuted, it was a brand new, virgin experience. It is built on top of OS X underpinnings, just as OS X is built on BSD underpinnings, but still, something new. Why encumber a brand new technology with old, non-standard technology that can be replaced with standards that are open and available to everyone. The onus should be on content providers to move forward, not for Apple to lean backwards.

Keep in mind that, although popular, Flash was never a great solution for delivering content. Flash works best on Windows computers. It always has. Adobe, to its credit has been working to improve performance on other OSes, but still Flash is unquestionably slower, and more resource-hungry on Unix-based systems than it is on Windows. iPhone OS, Android, and WebOS are all Unix-based. On top of that, Flash is designed for modern desktop systems where ample amounts of memory and processing power can be safely assumed. On mobile devices both are limited, mostly because of the constraints of battery size and capacity. So far, no one has been able to demonstrate acceptable Flash performance on any mobile device. Not even on Windows mobile devices. The truth is, whether you buy an iPhone, iPad, Android phone, or BlackBerry, you still have no choice. There will necessarily be a ton of content you can't see anyway.

In the end it comes down to this: Flash is firmly entrenched on desktop systems, but if content providers want to deliver content to mobile users, they must embrace HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3. HTML5 may not be complete, but video, audio, SVG, canvas, and JavaScript are available in mobile browsers RIGHT NOW, and Web developers should start using them.