Flash on the iPad
20/04/2010
One of the biggest, if not the biggest mistake that Apple made with the iPad was the lack of Flash. This is now causing them problems as unhappy customers cannot view the most useful websites related to News.
Over 75% of the popular news based websites make heavy use of Flash for essential information.
This was done to prevent security hacks, or so claims Apple. But this may in fact have the opposite impact?
Why?
Because people are busy devising work arounds to this. There are now at least two ways of getting Flash onto an iPad, and both involve using the iPad in ways it was not intended.
The first method (dubbed Frash) requires you to 'jailbreak' your iPad. This is the first problem as many iPads are used for business and owned by the business, and this sort of use may be frowned upon ort simpemly not allowed. The Frash does not work with the video element, but does allow many website Flash components to be viewed.
The second method (referred to as TransAct Transcoder V6) intercepts the Flash and "transcodes" it to play directly in the Safari web browser. Yet such solutions could be stopped from working by simple firmware upgrades from Apple, so this may not be a useful long term solution. In addition performance of websites with Flash apps may be downgraded. Website owners cannot respond until they see how the market will develop.
So what is the future of the iPad?
How fast the Flash situation is sorted will have as big an impact on the way the ipad catches on as the recession. So far Apple have been good at keeping mainly favourable reports in the press, but as more and more dissatisfied users speak out about the lack of Flash, the expected high sales and fast take up could be under threat.
