Kontra

Flash Player: Apple's Blind Spot?

Flash versus Open

Perhaps one thing we can all agree on is that the future of the web, mobile or otherwise, will be more or less open. That would be HTML, MP3, H.264, HE-AAC, and so on. These are not proprietary Adobe products, they are open standards…unlike Flash.

In confusing codecs with UI, Wilson keeps asking, “why is it tha[t] most streaming audio and video on the web comes through flash players and not html5 based players?” The answer is rather pedestrian: HTML5 is just ramping up, but Flash IDE has been around for many years. Selling Flash IDE and back-end server tools has been a commercial focus for Adobe, while Apple, for example, hasn’t paid much attention to QuickTime technologies and promotion in ages. It’s thus reflected in adoption patterns.

Hopefully, this summary will clear Wilson’s blind spot:

Apple is betting on open technologies (as it makes money on hardware) while Adobe (which only sells software) is betting on wrapping up content in a proprietary shackle called Flash.

From:

Does "A VC" have a blind spot for Apple?
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Platform Plays and Players: Signs of a Shakeout?

"The problem is, of course, that if a single vendor owns the platform, then the micro-economy that grows off the back of it is entirely vulnerable to any decisions made by the platform owner."

And yet the logical conclusion of that supposition, open source platforms, is no panacea as I explain here:

Agora phone exposes Android's Achilles Heel
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