Is iPad Apple’s Trojan Horse?
February 22, 2010 12 Comments
by Elias Shams
Blogging this post from Heathrow Airport, London as waiting for my flight to head back to my Awesome Washington, DC.
Referring to one of my earlier posts, most likely, iPad will be like your hot partner you won’t be able to shag. I was just reading this new article in one of my favorite coffee shop at Heathrow about iPad battery life time down to 1.5 hours from 10 hours if using Flash. Why didn’t Apple disclose such critical information before the launch of iPad last month? Does Steve Jobs have a dark side? It’s hard to believe a guy like him had no previous knowledge of getting Flash to work on iPad would significantly reduce iPad’s battery life.
I am not really a Microsoft fan, but, funny how Apple busted Microsoft’s balls for telling people to update their PCs with the release of Vista. It sounds like Apple is becoming the new Microsoft, Microsoft has already become the old IBM. And, of course, IBM is still IBM. Perhaps, lack of support for Flash in iPad was just Apple’s Trojan horse strategy hoping to achieve one the following:
a) Either, to get the entire market to dump Adobe’s Flash for HTML5, a new version of the programming language that will enable websites to stream video and display rich graphics without Flash.
b) Or, to get people continue buying from iTunes. If iPad had Flash, people would listen to music, watch TV, play games not created or sold by Apple. It sucks, but he’s not going to risk losing all of that revenue.
If his intention was “a”, Given i) 98% percent of computers around the world have Flash installed ii) Most of the main websites use Flash to power their videos and games, iii) HTML5 video cannot securely support client advertising logic, and iv) Ramping up ingestion, development, implementation, and support for a new technology being incredibly expensive in time and money,
What was Apple thinking?
Not to mention HTML5 is not even ready yet. From what I understand, it will take another three to five years for HTML5 to become standard.
Flash represents a type of creativity enabling technology that does not have a match on the Internet, in that it enables essentially full blown interactive applications online. In my mind this is a huge plus to the technology, even with its down sides, lack of searchability, and CPU usage. It is a strike against a Standard, which is needed still even in the age of sharing and openness. We still need tools like this that people can express their ideas fully
Anyway, the marketplace has obviously chosen Flash. If something better comes along that’s easy to implement on existing systems, then that will win. Until then, HTML5 will be ignored by the industry.
It will be very interesting to see how the iPad comes out of this as the winner. If they can at all.
No doubt, their commercial is awesome
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Hopefully the iPad will speed up the HTML5 train. The tag, as well as many new features in CSS3 are simply amazing, and currently only supported (for the most part) by webkit-based browsers (such as Safari, Chrome, etc.).
How come no mention of the $$$$$$$ in licensing apple will make if they force video to the ..264 codec? Don’t you think that’s at the center of this? Read: http://my.opera.com/Aux/blog/2010/02/01/html5-video-codec-war and lots more about it. This is no choice for the “greater good”, it’s a choice to benefit apple and google.
I am glad that flash is not part of the iPhone/iPad because as a developer/producer I can not earn real money with a Flash app but developing/producing iPhone/iPad app is full of revenue opportunities.
Phil, I am not a developer. would you elaborate a little bit more? I might do a separate blog for it. Cheers
Since 2000, I have been involved with numerous mobile software development (including tablet computing). None of my clients succeed. I witness 4 startup failures and drain all my saving. Since 2008, all my iPhone app projects have been successful at various degree (except for one bikini app). As an independent software developer, the iPhone platform is the only platform with real financial reward. I predict that this is going to continue for the next 2 years. By 2012, perhaps Google Android or Microsoft will grab some market share. When you do a deep analysis of the hardware and the software development kit of Apple iPad, you realized that if the iPad become a successful platform, it is going to be very hard for other companies to compete against Apple and/or produce copycat version. With the upcoming iPad, we are going to witness a new computing revolution bigger than the Apple II and Macintosh, bigger than he iPod and iPhone and within 10 years bigger than the PC.
Look at this concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7H0K1k54t6A I wish to see more product like that in the near future.
If you have two powerhouse companies like Google and Apple who are open source advocates, it might happen quicker. Google/Apple might be willing to donate engineers and code resources to help W3C ramp up HTML5 on a faster track.
Good Point Dan
Appearantly the author of this piece hasn’t yet heard about Flash on other mobile devices, which is not full Flash. Too bad.
Interesting Blog. My view for what its worth. Is that Open source is always the way forward, 1 million brains are better than 1 thousand. If Google or Apple get behind HTML5 we can be sure to see it being rolled out in the not too distant future, and as soon as it is, it wont take too long for it to be the standard coding throughout the Internet. Possible Web 2.1 – The next generation of Surfing.
Its always interesting to see peoples opinions on future advances, bearing in mind how poor the first iPods were compared to what we have available now i don’t think we should be too concerned.
My guess is that Google will take the market forward on the strength of the iPads performance and popularity. If its profitable watch this space.
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The iPad not using Flash is the least of its problems. In the meantime, I use this firefox addon running on my Ibook https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433
I think the iPad is going to hit a sweet spot. Most people don’t really need more capabilities than what it is offering. I’m already visualizing it’s use at home for surfing the web, social related activities, and media viewing. I also see using them at work where carrying around notebook computers are awkward for like inventory access, document viewing, and meetings. Another thing I’m excited about is Remote Desktop type of access where the iPad is just a thin client for keeping tabs on servers.
Mr. Kitchen, you make a great point. The iPhone/iPod Touch already supports LogMeIn Ignition, an app that allows you to remotely control a Mac or PC. This app on the iPad, or an official Apple app would be extremely convenient for sysadmins, or even power users on the go! I use my old PowerBook G4 as a download server and use remote control software to begin large file downloads when I’m out and about away from my home office.