Bit Too Flashy

It has been awhile since the first few thousand iPads were sent around the world to reach their lucky (?) customers. Apple already celebrated the 1 millionth sold iPad. However, with the new Apple gadget, customers became less tolerant in the continuously rewinding Flass-support issue. iPad, similarly to the iPhone or the iTouch (all of which feature the touch-screen mechanism), does not support Flash. The result is: 60% of YouTube videos and millions of multimedia player plug-ins cannot be accessed via these devices.

Steve Jobs recently responded to the issue in a lengthy public letter posted on Apple's homepage. To sum up the letter in a nutshell, Apple CEO tells the story of Adobe (creator of Flash) and Apple working together in the golden era of developing PC's and then parting ways since Adobe became the sole developer of Flash. According to Jobs, Adobe does not contribute in developing the currently widespread HTML5 technology, the common internet platform over which most of the large webpages (like Google or, recently, YouTube) are based on. Since today an ever growing percentage of internet access is via 3G mobiles, it would be necessary to either upgrade Flash for mobile phone interfaces or touch-screen mechanisms.

Well, it's great that IT history is on the verge of a great breakthrough in web development, but it is taking a bit too much time. Customer still can't access plug-ins or Flash-driven content via Apple gadgets, and their tensioning impatience is easy to understand.