One in a series of rotating images on Apple's main page shows a story from The New York Times, entitled "The 31 Places to Go in 2010." In the image, a picture of a beach in Montenegro is shown. The picture is part of 17 images displayed at the top of the story in Flash.
When accessing that same page on an iPhone, the images do not load. Instead, it says "In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here," with a corresponding link.
It's likely the iPad photos are simply renderings of the device, rather than actual screenshots taken of the Web sites. For example, the URL bar for the Times Web site simply shows "http://travel.nytimes.com" rather than the address for the actual story displayed.
Apple has famously shunned Flash, with the Web plugin having no support in the iPhone Safari browser. The company has even encouraged developers to "stick with standards" and use CSS, JavaScript and Ajax instead of Adobe Flash. In short, it's unlikely that Flash support will exist in the iPad when it ships in two months.
This week, Adobe spoke out in criticism of Apple when Jobs' live presentation showed Flash did not work on the new multitouch iPad. Writing on the company's official Flash blog, Adrian Ludwig said "Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers."
"Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple's DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers," Ludwig wrote. "And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web."
He went on to note a number of popular Web sites that iPad users will not be able to access without Adobe Flash, including Hulu, ESPN, Farmville, and Disney, of which Jobs is the company's largest shareholder.
And yet Apple's Web site shows Flash content loading on the iPad, even when Jobs' live demonstration did not.
A Flash-based slideshow on The New York Times Web site, as seen on a Mac.
In yet another example, the promotional iPad video featured on Apple's Web site shows the Times video player loading on the iPad's Safari browser. But that very same feature of the Web site did not load when Jobs did his live onstage demonstration.
While Adobe has pushed for years to have Flash on the iPhone since it launched, Apple has not budged. The company's rejection of Flash and move towards alternatives such as HTML5 suggest the Web plugin will not likely appear on the iPad.
For more on why Apple isn't likely to support Flash in the iPhone OS, read AppleInsider's three-part Flash Wars series.
174 Comments
Showed NY Times videos playing on the iPhone.
I inquired about Flash support on the iPhone to a friend at Adobe mobile team last summer. His response paraphrased was "Jobs already has it and it is up to him to decide what to do with it."
I wonder if Flash on the iPad would make it feel snappier.
I smell a class action law suit coming.... although not exactly sure how it would be written.
My argument with it not loading while he was showing off the iPad was the page wasn't fully loaded as you can tell by the bar in Safari it wasn't 80% done and we all know that Flash is the last thing to load in Safari. It seemed like the Wifi connection he was on was slow as well which surprised me as I would have thought he would have had a dedicated Wifi Network to work from so there wouldn't be a delay. So Flash may be incorporated but because of the page not loading fully everyone jumped on the "on no flash" bandwagon.
How does Adobe know that Apple's ePUB will be DRM? I don't remember seeing this in the keynote. Isn't that just conjecture on Adobe's part?