Adobe is finally combating Apple’s anti-Flash campaign with an ad blitz hitting at Apple’s walled-garden, allegedly dictatorial ways.
This banner ad from Adobe began appearing today:
As you recall, the iPad doesn’t support Flash as Apple CEO Steve Jobs disparages it as a shoddy, battery-draining application.
Adobe’s PR spin is that it loves Apple, but it has a lot of disclaimers.
Here’s Adobe’s take, replete with other links and resources, on how, “Everyone loses when technological barriers impede the exchange of ideas.”
Where does this dispute leave travel-industry developers in their efforts to create compelling apps using video and animation?
Should they chuck Flash out the window and await the fine-tuning of HTML5?
“Jobs is counting on the buzz and cool factors to pull an attractive demographic that will force organizations to work on the Apple platform [without Flash],” says hotel industry consultant Robert Cole of RockCheetah. Â ”The big travel players will probably need to do this, or risk being perceived as slow, followers, non-tech savvy, or heaven-forbid, not cool.”
The problem is this may lead to a lot of dumbing-down for the time being.
“The challenge in travel is that sites need to take this limitation into consideration and, in many cases, it means either building stripped-down sites or deploying multiple sites for the appropriate environment,” Cole says. “I see it as either reducing customer usability and engagement, or driving up operating costs for the site publisher.”
In travel, we see the negative impact of closed systems every day: desktop development gets hindered and airlines’ merchandising efforts get slow-tracked because of the burden of legacy systems or a lack of standards.
Regarding the Adobe-Apple Flash conflaguration, Coles notes that a resolution could come with the widespread adoption of HTML5, but this could take years.
In the meantime, he sides with open source systems.
“As I don’t really like Steve Jobs dictating what technologies I can use, and there is not sufficient technology available to build comparable sites as quickly in HTML5, he can pound sand,” Cole says. “I am changing phones in June and this is a big reason that I’m going to an Android phone. I can get Flash now and use HTML5 when it becomes available.”
Mobiata President Ben Kazez, however, sides with Apple in the Adobe-Apple debate.
“Our view is that Apple is correct on this one,” Kazez says. “Flash apps currently don’t provide the same immersive, engaging customer experience as native apps written for each platform. Â In our view it’s the same as the debate between web-based apps and native apps.”
“We’d much rather develop a simple mobile website and focus our attention on engaging native apps,” Kazez says. “It leads to higher adoption, higher conversions, and ultimately more revenue.”
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Here’s a great infographic on HTM5/CSS3-ready browsers http://j.mp/dsXuS3 The Internet Explorer crowd is not going to be happy if Flash was replaced by HTML5 today.
Or, take a look at the top 101 HTML 5 websites http://j.mp/akr24Z how many of them do you use daily?
For the record, no, I am not an Apple hater. I probably have more history with Apple products than most people (have you used the Apple 2, Apple III and LISA? Didn’t think so…)
What I do hate is the Splinternet – especially when it disenfranchises broad swaths of users who are seeking functionality & improved web experiences.
To be clear, I’m not a Flash lover either – it is definitely a resource hog.
My main issue is the political play using users as the pawns. Sadly, it seems that the roles have been reversed in Apple’s famed 1984 commercial launching the Mac. Decide for yourself: http://j.mp/cXsxIx
Robert: Nice video. But is the iPad in 2010 becoming like 1984? hmmmm.
Listen closely to the script of what “Big Brother” on the screen is saying… The irony is palpable…
Flash is hardly an open product.
PROBLEM: If a developer today builds a site for a leading hotel that is predominantly (or entirely) in Flash, they’re doing the client a serious disservice. A substantial proportion of potential guests will see nothing but a blue cube.
SOLUTION: don’t use Flash.
For the record, there isn’t an android phone running flash either yet…
It is my understanding that FULL Flash 10.1 for Android (including HD capability) will be available in June with a minimum requirement of an ARM v7 (Cortex) processors, such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon and TI OMAP3. First Generation Android phones won’t get it, so the line appears to be drawn at the Motorola DROID & HTC Nexus One, but recent releases like the HTC Incredible will have it.
On the other hand Flash Lite 4.0 (true, it does not provide “full” flash support, but provides some basic functionality) works on Android.
Additionally, the Skyfire 2.0 proxy-based browser provides support for Flash similar extent as Flash Lite.
Bottom line, one can view a majority of Flash sites, play Flash based games, etc.
As far as Steve Jobs’ rationale for not supporting Flash – read this article – especially the comments: http://j.mp/dCcjlJ
I’ll give you a personal example. My 12 year old daughter is a HUGE Apple fan. She is also a Ford model and created her own web site last year (with a little help from me) in a couple hours using Wix – a free Flash based site creation tool.
So what is her best alternative?
1) Does she need to hire a HTML5 designer to re-do her site? Damn, then it wouldn’t run on Internet Explorer.
2) Should she have parallel sites created? That complicates ongoing support for updates.
3) Should she can dumb down her site and scrap the cool animation effects that make her site unique, like the image gallery she uses for her portfolio? That degrades the user experience.
For a 12 year old (or a hotel company coming off its the worst year in the history of the industry) none of these alternatives is very attractive.
Her site works fine on a 2008 HTC Kaiser running Windows Mobile 6.5, not exactly a powerhouse / state of the art hardware & software setup… go figure…
Steve Jobs politically driven splinternet game to screw Adobe & Microsoft is making her life more complex. Maybe she will grow up to be the girl hurling the sledgehammer through the Apple “Big Brother” video screen…
That’s my understanding too, but they also said it would be here in early 2009
Mind you, as per this blog post, they do appear to be pretty close: http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2010/may/08/android-flash-demo-flashcamp-seattle/ Then I guess the question will be what it does to battery life etc, but that’s a trade-off users will just have to make I think.
I agree with Gruber in this very timely piece – http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/nack_control that the best thing Adobe can do is get Flash working awesomely on Android. Apple will follow suit if it makes sense for Apple’s business (go figure
), and if there is a great product that actually works on mobile devices without compromising user experience, why wouldn’t they make it work?! And especially if it’s Apple’s enemy number 1, Google, that is to otherwise benefit, that’s just even more reason for Apple to add flash support to mobile safari.
All in all the ball is just very much in Adobe’s court, and it’s been there for at least two years, without them being able to ship a product that’s been good enough. I think that’s Adobe’s mistake more than Apple’s.
Regarding developing a website in Flash, the problem goes way beyond whether or not it can be viewed on an iphone or ipad. Would you honestly *ever* recommend *any* hotel to develop their website using Flash? That would be robbing them of the potential to get any kind of meaningful search traffic, in other words, probably 50%+ of their potential. I don’t think anyone running a business in the travel industry should even think of considering Flash for their website, unless their main goal is not to get any kind of search traffic.
For your daughter, or any hotel on a budget, there’s very simple plug and play solutions using jquery which give you all the same animations for photo galleries as Flash does, and they’ll work across browsers and devices. You don’t need to dumb down anything just because you aren’t using Flash, if anything *not* using Flash means you are smartening upwards
“Would you honestly *ever* recommend *any* hotel to develop their website using Flash?”
Of the 60-odd places to stay we listed in our last iPhone app (for an island in Thailand), of those that had websites, around half were either flash-only or substantially made out of flash. So unfortunately many people do recommend that path.
“So unfortunately many people do recommend that path.”
And they should be fired for it… I sincerely doubt Robert would ever make that recommendation though. It’s great that so many hotels are still making this mistake for the OTA’s etc though
Travel industry businesses are chock full of sites that are heavily burdened with Flash. While creating a site that is primarily a big beautiful flash movie has always been an easy way to please the boss, it’s been a disaster from a usage, usability, SEO and mobile compatibility standpoint. Sites that rely on Flash instead of HTML are remarkably difficult to work with when it comes to cross channel promotion and visibility on the web. And they severely limit the audience size on the PC as well as on mobile devices – that is, virtually all mobile devices, not just iPhones. Now there’s a new element: touch-friendliness. Phones with touchscreens – and now with the re-emergence of tablets, PC’s with touchscreens – have a growing market share and are turning over the installed base of devices. Flash sites that rely on mouse roll-overs to expose content such as menus and other information will become obsolete – meaning, they will have to be redesigned.
I have to disagree with Ben Kazez though – although he’s right to focus on Jobs’ related argument that Flash is not an appropriate development platform for smartphone apps, it’s not similar to the mobile web vs. native apps argument he puts forth. And Jobs apparently agrees. For information consumption (even in content rich, interactive, social-enabled, transactional interfaces) the open HTML platform is the future for mobile. Unless you are developing a game(the meaning behind the word immersive), why counsel anyone to shortchange the lion-share of your audience? The NBC Winter Olympics site was developed for mobile web and native app and found that if they hadn’t released the mobile web-designed version, they would have left 75% of their audience on the table. Those users also said that having had a great mobile web experience they were more likely to visit mobile web sites in the future. Businesses should probably develop their mobile content for all web-enabled phones as a baseline and then take a careful look at what functionality is truly missing – then if it’s helpful, develop a parallel native app.