Rant: Get rid of Flash? Are you crazy?

Before I start my rant, I have to tell you, I'm not an Apple hater. I'm more of a PC than a Mac, simply because I've just rolled that way for so long. My first computer was an Apple II-C, and after that, a Macintosh Plus. For a while after that, PCs. Currently I have a Mac Mini running Snow Leopard and I love it. I also have two computers running Windows 7 and I love those too. Yes, people DO exist that enjoy both worlds. Don't hate.

Rant on.

While people are defending the iPad (which doesn't support Flash just like the iPhone/iPod), some people are saying they don't need Flash. Some people just don't get it. Flash IS important right now. Sure you can argue that you don't need Flash on your iPhone/iPod/iPad, but are you doing that because you're trying to defend your purchase decision? Sure HTML5 will do away with the need for Flash VIDEO, but what about all the existing Flash based sites, games and apps out there? Do you ever go to your favorite music artist's site to check out new music? Chances are, their site uses Flash. You happen to use Pandora outside of your phone? That uses Flash. Do you like checking out game reviews? Their videos use Flash (and most of them don't use Youtube). Also, you're giving up all the great flash based games and apps out there. Then there's the question of how soon sites will roll out support for HTML5. Youtube is basically there, but what about Hulu or Netflix? I could bore you with a big list of video sites.

Then there are the people who say we need to get rid of Flash altogether. So I ask you...

What's the answer?

Should we get rid of Silverlight as well? If your answer is a "standard, open source" flash/silverlight-like language, what makes you think it won't just give us what we currently have with HTML? The HTML "Standard" has been around for a while now, and guess what? It's ANYTHING BUT STANDARD. Web developers still struggle on a day to day basis to get HTML displayed the same way in 5 or so browsers. You can blame IE all you want, but Firefox and Chrome have their crappy moments. If you want some kind of standard, there needs to be a set of standard unit tests for which implentations need to pass. Something similar to the Acid Test.

So I'm going to say this. Flash is here to stay... At least for a more dynamic web. Not neccessarily video. HTML5 will roll out eventually, but it won't happen overnight and there will always be a need for something more than what simple markup and javascript can bring to the table. A standard, open, flash/silverlight-language is going to take serious time before it will ever be successful. Us developers already have enough to deal with, thanks.

One thing the iPad showed us is that Apple continues to embrace a closed and highly regulated architecture on their devices.

By the way, if you're like me and need a more open phone, the Nexus One will support flash soon, has a simple way to enable multitouch support (which by the way is supported in all apps that are coded for it), supports multitasking, and they will be rolling out the phone for Verizon's network this Spring. The best of all worlds. You can thank me later.

Rant off.