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Apple’s iPad criticized for not supporting Adobe Flash
Ever since Apple Inc. launched its highly-anticipated tablet PC, iPad, the device is being criticized for not supporting the ability to render interactive content building, using Flash platform by Adobe.
by Priyanka - February 21, 2010 - comments
However, so far Apple has shown no inclination towards adding Adobe’s Flash platform in its popular iPad device.
Apple had introduced its iPhone devices in 2007 without any support for Adobe Flash platform and so far it seems to be doing more than fine business in the market.
After that Adobe started a campaign to revitalize everybody’s interest in its Flash. To accomplish the goal, Adobe went on to announce a whole new series of Flash 10.1 runtimes for Windows Mobile, Palm WebOS, Nokia S60/Symbian and Android phones.
According to experts, all this development by Adobe suggests that iPad might run in some problem sooner than later if Apple continued to ignore Flash.
Apple’s CEO trashes Adobe Flash?
Reportedly, in a meeting with Wall Street Journal executives earlier this week, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs called Adobe’s Flash platform a “CPU hog” and a dying technology.
“We don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology,” stated Jobs as per the reports. Jobs allegedly also confirmed that Apple has no plans even in future to support Flash on its iPad or any other future versions of the iPhone.
Reports also suggest that Jobs did not stop there but went on to say, "Whenever a Mac crashes, more often than not it's because of Flash."
When Apple was contacted to clarify its CEO’s comments, the company said that it, "does not comment on rumor or speculation".
Adobe’s reaction to Jobs comments
Adobe responded to all the accusations allegedly leveled by Jobs via a blog post by the firm's Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch. In the blog Lynch wrote that the company does everything it can to avoid security and reliability issues.
"Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today," wrote Lynch.
Meanwhile, analysts believes that Apple has a good reason to thrash Adobe since its new device just like iPhone does not support the platform so it wants to convince customers to simply drop Flash.
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research said, “Flash is slow, it requires frequent updates and it’s relatively buggy.
“Flash has another issue that Apple hates. To be at all efficient, Flash has to talk directly to the hardware, and Apple, which wants to control the user experience entirely, doesn’t expose hardware to outside developers.”