KillerSites Blog

iPad and iPhone are BAD for the Web

January 28, 2010

I don’t want to bore you guys to tears, but Apple’s latest move to not support Flash (and thus 99% of web video) on the iPad is very disturbing.

The facts are simple:

  • Millions of web pages with Flash content will break on iPhones and iPads.
  • Like it or not Flash is ubiquitous.
  • Flash is controlled by Adobe but free to anyone to write code against.
  • Apple is doing this to try and control content distribution – IMHO.
  • HTML 5’s video support is years away from being an option to use on commercial web sites.

Since Flash is not supported by the iPad or the iPhone and since the vast majority of web surfers don’t have HTML 5, if we want to deliver video on the Web, we have to support two methods of delivery.

… Just like it was during the 1990’s browser wars, where we had to write code for IE and code for Netscape. Thanks Apple for bringing back the good old days! Jerks.

Apple has to stop being a bunch of iJerks and support Flash.

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com