Whats a waste! Apple’s Steve Job is getting awfully close to libelous scamming of Adobe Flash Player.Adobe has made the critical mistake of not putting enough resources into developing for Linux and Mac. And so Steve throws out HTML5 as a solution – and walks right into 3 big punches. First, HTML5 is far from a consensus standard among all the browser players[most notably Microsoft which begs to differ on some of the key elements in HTML5]. Second, just try to find HTML5 enabled tools like Dreamweaver CS5, lastets Eclipse, Aptana Studio, Netbeans, TopStyle – there are no tools ready for HTML5. Third and finally is that Google and others are delivering HTML5 stuff now that is “disruptive to Apple” Fo
For example, because Apple refused the Objective C version of Google Voice, the Googlites rewrote Google Voice using HTML5. So now can Steve not allow the HTML5 version of Google Voice? If he does allow it – then the iPad becomes a wonderful phone using Skype+Google Voice and future versions of iPad lose some allure. If he does not allow the HTML5 version of Google Voice then Steve has some real cedibility problems at the least – and maybe some lawsuits and/or antitrust action.
But Steve is shaky again in another area – he has rejected Flash even in the generated Objective C code form – saying that generated code does not take advantage of all the iPad and iPhone features. But this invalidates a number of other iPad/iPhone code generators too. So again what does Steve do – invalidate just the Flash to iPhone generator [and get slapped with a law suit in that case for discriminatory practices] or ban all code generators – and loose a good number of developers to other platforms and a loss of momentum for development on the iPhone.
For the best breakdown on whats up see the following analysis by the Gerson Lehrman Group. But the bottom line is that Flash has just received a huge blow similar to what Microsoft did to Sun’s Java on PCs. Microsoft had to pay $2billion to Sun for polluting Java; but hey they had $24billion in cash at that time and it prevented people from migrating from Windows to Linux and Macs which Java GUI applets and Weblets allowed. Hmmm, Apple right now has $24B in its Cash Kitty – and iPhone and iPad makes up more than 50% of its profit about – maybe Steve can afford a lawsuit costing $1-4Billion to save the $8-10Billion in iPhone and iPad profits per year and growing. See the model below: