The past couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to stay more on top of the news as I’ve been watching the stock market. Up goes the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) soaring to new stock highs despite disappointing results of iPad sales and Steve Jobs talking bad about Blackberry’s and other tablets. Releasing the new Macbook Air and Mac OS 10.7 “Lion”Apple now has made the decision to not include Adobe Flash player preinstalled on it’s Macintosh computers. Barring Flash also as a development environment until recently, it seems that the big A’s are poising into positions of greater hostility. The bright side of these happenings would be one of security. Usually, by the time a person purchases their computer, Adobe Flash already has some updates that need to be installed. By not having the player, it would force users of new computers to download the latest version thus ensuring they have the most secure version available. This is the only reason that makes sense not to have Flash preloaded and is not a bad idea.
On the other hand, that only addresses Macintosh computers. The iPad and iPod iOS platform still bans Flash web browsing and that is starting to really annoy me. Being a avid user of Google Finance for stock charts, I really like the ability to scroll through charts and see exactly the effect of breaking news in correlation to the stock market. Many sites these days do use some bits of Flash. And certainly Flash adds rich content which can add enormous functionality to a site. Perhaps what Apple should do instead of making enemies is just jump on the band wagon and make a version of Safari where Flash would just work – and besides, it is the iOS platform…shouldn’t everything be sandboxed anyway thus preventing problems? I’m happy that HTML 5 is here, but I still want my Flash.
I seriously feel that Apple is the little kid on the block trying to bully others in the industry. Like a little dog which may have sharp teeth but overall he’s still tiny and he’s barking at the wrong and very much larger dog which could shred it to pieces. With upcoming tablets such as the Archos which supports not only Flash viewing but offers a slew of additional technologies including the webcam and a micro SD slot for only a mere $300-350 USD, the appeal of getting an iPad begins to drop. Apple is shooting themselves. Many people know how to develop with Flash. It kind of leaves a bit of a nasty taste in the mouth when yes, now you can use Flash, but previously Apple fought hard and lost due to public pressure. The tablet war has only just begun – don’t get too puffed up Apple as a simple pin would make a pretty loud bang.
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