Flash news instead of News Flash - get it..
Steve Jobs wrote a public letter recently called Thoughts on Flash, where he announces that Apple devices such as the iPad, iPod, iTouch, iDunno everything they make will no longer support Adobe Flash. For some this is a real shocker as Apple has held approximately 20% investment into Adobe's portfolio. Adobe products have continuously been married to the Apple product line. Finally, Steve Jobs has announced what most of us (all linux users) already know, Adobe Flash sucks!
I do remember the first time I saw a website done in Adobe Flash. It had motion, it was graphically the most beautiful thing on the web I had ever seen to that point. It was litterally an image of a tree with birds moving around it and alternating text. I'll never forget the words I said half out loud as I looked at this site, "This is the future of web design right here." {I'm right now sort of half way laughing to myself..no at myself.} I proceeded to purchase every book available I could on find on Flash, I bought Macromedia (maker at the time) Flash software and went to work. After about a couple of weeks I thought, this takes too long...ughhh.
The fact is, it was the future of web design for at least a couple of years. It became so popular so fast that it became annoying. It seemed like every major corporation website you went to you had to either watch a commercial before you could enter the website to see content or as most of us quickly learned exactly where the "Skip intro" link was to completely ignore a beautiful piece of work that a programmer probably slaved over for months. Click = shut up.
The letter from Steve Jobs outlines the reasons for Apple's departure for using Adobe Flash as the future of the web will greatly rely on mobile devices and Adobe Flash just doesn't run well on mobile devices. It drains battery life, it was designed for interaction with a mouse and not with use of touch screens. From a development standpoint Flash is closed source and proprietary and they require developers to use Adobe Flash development tools. Jobs sees this as a liability for Apple requiring development to a limited source library makes for substandard apps.
Apple instead will embrace the new HTML5 standards which is more open for all systems and browsers on any device and browser and is very media content friendly.
This is a bold move for Apple in my book. Apple is often seen as having too much control over functionality of its devices, yet by doing so they've managed to have a very high control over the quality and performance of their products. No other computer manufacturer can compare. So it pleases me a great deal that Apple recognizes the need for open yet structured standards for web browsers. These new standards are built with accessibility and usablity in mind, making them not only cross-platform but cross-device as well. A website that rocks on your PC will also rock on your Android device (did I really say that), or your iPhone.