Apple vs Adobe, Flash VS HTML5 - battle is on

Anthony Caruana
Saturday, 05 June 2010 23:53

Your IT - Mobility

 

 

In case you'd missed it, Apple and Adobe are locked in a battle. It's a battle over which standards will prevail in our web browsers. On one side, Adobe and its Flash platform is the reigning champion. Flash has been the powerhouse behind the distribution of video and other rich web content. But coming out of the other corner is the challenger. With the muscle of Safari running on the mobile powerhouses of the iPhone and iPad, Apple is seeking to break Adobe's hold by embracing HTML5.

 

At this week's D8 conference, Steve Jobs declared that Adobe had submitted a version of Flash for the iPhone but that it ran so poorly that Apple asked Adobe to try again. Apparently, Adobe declined Apple's invitiation. For the rest of us, that's lead to a war of words with Apple saying that Flash is a power hungry resource hog.

On one side, we have these statements made by Steve Jobs in an open letter earlier this year.

"Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system."

"Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - all open standards. Apple's mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member."

Apple is betting a huge amount on the widespread adoption of HTML5. The Safari web browser, built on the open source WebKit project, is all about HTML5. Apple's arguments about Flash beiing a resource hog may be true but one suspects that this fight is as much about Apple stamping its mark on the web through the iPhone and iPad, making them the company that defines the way the web looks.