March 2nd, 2010 by admin

So, some things have happened in the past week which cast a very interesting new light on the iPad/Apple/Adobe debate.

Recently, as anyone who has read anything of these pages will know, I’ve been following with great interest the heated ‘debate’ being carried out amongst the world’s web developers around the future of HTML5 and Flash, which was initiated by Steve Jobs comments when launching the iPad. That debate, (or ‘flame war’), has rarely surfaced above the level of playground sniping, with posts such as “Why HTML5 Will Kill Flash”, “Why Flash 10.1 WIll Kill HTML5″ and “Why The Web Does Not Need Flash” amounting to little more than “My Dad Is Bigger Than Your Dad”. I haven’t linked those posts, but you can find numerous examples if you feel the need, they are linked in previous posts on this blog.

But something has changed. Now, rather than developers and their own petty grievances, the world of big business has seen fit to pass comment. This is far more significant, as it is not the developers of the world who will determine the future of rich experience on the web and on devices, it is both the consumers, who know nothing of the politics involved, and big business, who will be spending the money. Where businesses choose to spend their money will determine what experience consumers get, influence what their competition does, and therefore shape the future of rich experience.

So some businesses have spoken – what did they say? Well, first up, Steve Jobs paid a personal visit to the Wall Street Journal, to demonstrate the iPad to them, and to trash Flash technology and encourage them to switch to HTML5, and obviously develop for the iPad. Now personally, I have massive respect for Steve Jobs and my expectation would be that when he speaks, people listen – whatever he says. I was wrong about that. Here’s the Guardian Tech Blog write-up of the visit, and of the Wall Street Journal’s response.  You have to subscribe to the WSJ to read the full article, but you can see where it’s going.  I would regard this as something of a blow to Jobs and Apple.  Anytime a business wheels out it’s biggest gun it must do so in the full expectation of a positive reception to his message.  For Jobs to personally visit the WSJ and have his message rebuffed in this way cannot have been taken lightly.  His statements are no longer being taken at face value, but analysed for validity and found to be wanting by the very audience he is trying to court.

The second interesting stance is that of Conde Nast. As you can see from their site Conde Nast are something of a giant of the publishing world, and as such are at the forefront of Apple’s drive to redefine publishing around the iPad. Wired is a publication of Conde Nast, and you may be aware of their work with Adobe in creating a full-featured application for the iPad, using Flash.  Conde Nast already has an iPhone app, and are going to be porting this and their other publications’ iPhone apps to the iPad, (just giving user’s the iPhone experience on the larger device).  According to this article however, featuring an interview with Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend, they are most certainly not going to be developing the full experience for iPad as demonstrated by Adobe for Wired any time soon, and the reason is purely that Adobe is not supported by Apple.

What Conde Nast do plan to do is to go into ‘R&D mode’ thru October, to give themselves time to decide how to move forward.  This seems eminently sensible.  I would guess that much of their competition may choose similar paths.  This means that the early apps for the iPad may be far from the ultimate user experiences that user’s of the device might expect, as big business sits back and waits to see what develops.  As will we all.