Okay Geek Farm
Adobe and HTML5 - Steve got exactly what he wanted
Brandon Davenport
Steve does not hate Adobe, he hates flash - and just like a lot of web designers, he also wants flash gone. For years Apple and Adobe have been fighting with the gloves off over putting Flash on the iPhone, and for weeks, Flash fans have been frusterated over the lack of Flash on the iPad. What we fail to notice through all this is the events that followed at the Web 2.0 Expo justified what Apple has been trying to do for the past 3 years.
When a company has complete control over a certain market, in this case the mobile market, they can make changes that effect existing companies and technologies, and since Apple is holding every tech savvy hipster in the palm of their hands, companies have to adapt to the changes Apple makes - most recently re-doing websites to be compatible with the iPad, and long before that the iPhone.
When you think of the control Apple has over websites like Youtube, Facebook and the Wall Street Journal, who receive an immense amount of traffic from Apple mobile devices with no Flash support, and all of a sudden you get a broken experience. The WSJ has now applied HTML5 technologies to deliver video, and Vimeo along with Youtube have done so as well, and thousands of other websites have taken the leap of faith into optimizing their sites for iDevices.
The Breaking Point
Just recently when Apple announced at the iPhone OS 4 event that developers would not be allowed to use 3rd party tools to build iPhone apps, Adobe reached its boiling point, and faced Apple with an Anti-trust Inquiery. Why go to such lengths? Well, Adobe had spend a long time working on implementing tools into Adobe CS5 that would allow iPhone developers to build iPhone and iPad apps, which Apple did not like thus slammed the door on 3rd party tools.
Adobe has no more ammunition at this point, and it is out of ideas to sway Apple into allowing Flash on the iPhone and iPad. On May 5th, news from the Web 2.0 Expo spread about Adobe making changes to their business plan. Changes that would drop jaws and make Steve quietly pump his fists in the air in excitement.
Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe
The pieces come together
“We’re going to try and make the best tools in the world for HTML5” - this is what Adobe CTO, Kevin Lynch, stated at the Web 2.0 Expo and as soon as the words left his lips, an uproar of questions and an overwhelming deficit of answers flooded in. He went on to say that HTML5 is “a terrific step forward” and no one has realized that this was Apples big plan.
Apples plan was not to get rid of Adobe, or start another format war, it was to change a few peoples minds. All Apple wanted to do was hear those words from Adobe, and watch the last peice fall into place. Apple has started a new era of mobile web development, in the most covert and efficient way possible. Tip of the hat Steve, I never saw this coming…
