The Mark 2010

Steve Jobs doesn't seem to want Adobe anywhere near Apple's devices, but what's Flash's fate with other systems and platforms?

During the keynote unveiling of the iPad, Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously exposes the Achilles heel of the "magical" device. While demonstrating the power of the tablet Mac computer, Jobs clearly shows the New York Times #FAILing miserably to show video. This was one of this year's more blogged about gaffes. But was it a gaffe?

Jobs is known for his meticulous attention to detail and the careful rehearsal of his keynote presentations. Surely this nipple-slip was no wardrobe malfunction. In fact, this was a subtle yet effective poke to publishers who haven't yet thought past the status quo.

Imagine the conversation that happened moments after the publisher of the New York Times heard that his website is not compatible with the iPad. The first person to bear the brunt was likely the person responsible for the website: "Why the hell doesn't our video play on the iPad?" "The iPad doesn't support Adobe Flash." "So?" "Well, we only make our video available to devices with Flash." "By the end of day, our video better work on the iPad, or you're fired."

Those may not have been the exact words, and that might not have been the timeline, but the above dialogue illustrates a point: publishers are responsible for making their content available to all devices. It is not the responsibility of all devices to support a certain plug-in. It's safe to say that the employee in the above dialogue kept his job, since the Times is now a featured ”iPad-ready” website for the iPad.

Steve Jobs has no intention of allowing Flash to run on Apple’s devices for a number of reasons. Regardless of what Adobe or the Department of Justice may think is fair, Flash is not a standard. And if you value your audience, you will start thinking cross-platform. Jobs's suggestion for creating cross-platform applications: HTML 5 (and other related browser technologies). It should be noted that the applications found in the iPhone app store are not cross-platform, and Apple is well known for rejecting applications that could compete with its built-in functionality.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen argues (with considerable misinformation) that it’s in the consumer's best interest for every device in the world to run the Flash player plug-in so that publishers can create one version of an application, and have it work on any device. His reasoning is that Flash is a cross-platform open standard. But as observed by John Gruber, it’s clearly not an open standard platform.

The reality for Adobe is that the monopoly they have enjoyed on web video and interactive content is slipping. Internet usage is moving to mobile handheld devices and light netbooks, away from the desktop computer where the Flash player has thrived. As a video player, it’s simply no longer required, and even YouTube – which single-handedly made Flash a de facto standard – is moving to HTML5 video. Until very recently, neither of the other two leading smartphone vendors had even announced support for the Flash player. Even the Skyfire mobile browser, which claims to "bring Flash video to Android," simply transcodes the video to H.264 and plays in an HTML5 player. The fate is similar for Adobe’s role in the exploding market for "apps.” Unless Adobe can successfully lobby the U.S. government to force Apple to allow Flash-based apps on its platform, this is a non-starter.

Adobe has announced that it’s testing a version of Flash specifically for the Android operating system. It remains to be seen how well Flash will work on Android devices and whether Adobe have slimmed the plug-in down sufficiently to maintain a high level of performance.

Luckily for Adobe, Flash will still be around on the desktop web for some time.