What I find funny about the whole Flash debate is that if we compile a list of devices that can consume web content, we come up with the following:
- PC's (Mac and Windows)
- Game consoles
- PDA's (eg. iPod Touch, Zune)
- Smartphones
- Tablets (ie. larger than a PDA, touch or stylus driven, not running a PC OS)
- internet radios and information appliances (eg. Sony Dash)
- in-car systems (eg. cars equipped with Ford Sync (primitive, but improving))
Of these, the PC's implement Flash well, the consoles not that great, and basically, none of the other categories handle Flash content well or at all.
So on the whole, the number of ways to consume web content is continually increasing, but the number of well implemented Flash capable devices is not.
Each of these devices needs to consume and display content in a way suited and adapted to its particular interface and usage scenarios. With open standards like HTML5, the device can choose how to render content. With Flash, the device can only render content as dictated by the developer.
So all in all, web consuming devices are proliferating, each with their unique needs for how they display and allow interaction with content, Flash is not proliferating out quickly, or at all, to a lot of these devices, and the Flash engine itself does not provide the flexibility that HTML5 and other technologies do in terms of allowing devices to process and make sane choices for displaying content.
Apple may be the most vocal, but I doubt they are the only players in the emerging internet appliance space that don't want or need Flash to accomplish their vision.
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-Scott
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