Posts Tagged ‘apple’

Is Flash dead? I hope not

// May 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // rambling, web development

As you know, I am a big Flash and HTML person. Flash and HTML5 do completely different things. They share a lot of features, yet each technology remains so unique that both will stay in the market for many years to come. Neither the one-sided push from Apple nor the fanatic zealotry of HTML5 advocates will take Flash out of the market. But if one thing is certain, the days of using Flash for trivial tasks that *do* require accessibility are over. The bad side of Flash is not the product itself, it’s developers misusing it for tasks it was not intended to do. If you look at the short history. Flash enabled utterly amazing things on the web in times when static-ness and ugliness ruled. The problem is that it was too easy to create. All of a sudden un-capable people could have created “amazing” things. The fact that Flash could be abused so easily is part of what make some people hate it. Even if we declare Flash as dead today, it’ll be a very lengthy process measured in years at best. And since, yet again, Flash isn’t dead yet. It has all this time to reinvent itself, Adobe should use this time wisely. If you tell me you don’t use Flash, you’re basically telling me that you have never seen a video or played a game online?! The browser wasn’t chosen to be the ultimate way to deliver new and cool applications because of it’s wonderful capabilities. It became as such because it’s the lowest common denominator. Maybe it’s time for a better lowest common, Flash was a step in the right direction, maybe we’ll be better with something more powerful like Steam. Actually the browser was also “chosen” because it’s very easy to create content for it.

The future competition between Google and Apple.

// January 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // rambling

Apple controls access to the dominant device of the mobile web; Google controls access to one of the most important mobile applications, and so far, is making it available for free only on Android. Google’s prowess is not just in search, but in mapping, speech recognition, automated translation, and other applications driven by huge, intelligent databases that only a few providers can offer. Microsoft and Nokia control comparable assets, but they too are Apple competitors, and unlike Google, their business model depends on selling access to those assets, not giving them away for free.

It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.