My Beef With Apple

This week’s launch of the Apple iPad came with much hype and eager anticipation. However, shortly after Steve Jobs revealed his latest creation some thrashing reviews started making their way across the internet. To see a summary of the criticism, check out this article on Gizmodo.

One of the glaring flaws is the lack of Adobe Flash support in the iPad Safari browser. As a Flash developer, this omission is a huge slap in the face. I own a iPod Touch and an iPhone. I dearly love both devices despite the fact that neither of them support Flash. I have no problem with this because the iPod Touch and the iPhone are not designed for delivering any sort of “web experience”. Fine. No big deal. Personally I don’t want Flash on these devices.

The iPad is a different story. Steve Jobs touts that the iPad will deliver the “ultimate browsing experience.” Yet without Flash they are neglecting some of the best web experiences in the world. Just check out the FWA for a list of fine examples. The ironic twist is that Apple’s iPad promo materials show sites that display Flash content. The AppleInsider reports on the misleading ad campaign.

The debate is getting quite heated between Adobe and Apple. Lee Brimelow, Adobe Flash Evangelist, made a witty post on his Flash blog. It shows how sites REALLY look when viewing them in iPad’s Safari browser. There is a lot of speculation as to why Apple refuses to include Flash and I won’t delve into that here. But one of the major complaints is that Flash is a CPU hog on the Mac. There is some truth to this complaint – Flash does consume more resources on the Mac than it does on the PC. Why? Because Apple won’t allow Adobe to tap into their api in order to provide for hardware acceleration. Microsoft does.