Apple right to reject Adobe Flash

Many people who are on the edge of the technological bubble have been loosely following Apple and its rejection of Adobe Flash, but many people don’t understand why Apple has taken this stance.

Apple’s critics have cited many instances of how the company not supporting Flash is little more than a business tactic to undermine competitors. While that might be the case, there are many other problems with Flash, and Apple is smart to have passed it up.

The first — and most important — fact about Flash is that, for only playing video, it is a computer resource hog. When watching shows on Hulu, my laptop processor can heat up to 170 degrees — 50 degrees above the norm. That translates to my processor having to do a lot to handle the load Flash is throwing at it. Compare this to watching a QuickTime movie, which doesn’t elevate the processor temperature more than 10 degrees.

This temperature increase directly translates to energy consumption; the hotter a processor gets, the more power it is using. If a mobile device such as an iPad or iPhone were to use Flash, the battery would quickly be drained, leaving users complaining about poor battery life.

Apple responded to the video streaming questions by implementing (not creating) the HTML5 standard — the new Internet markup language standard, which includes video streaming capabilities.

HTML5 is quickly being adopted as the new standard for streaming video, and Apple even has a list of Web sites that use it and are thus compatible with the iPad and iPhone OS.

Another reason for passing on Flash is that Apple has a very structured and controlled model for application distribution. Though the process is far from perfect, and the company has been criticized for its practices, Apple desires to remain the only source of applications. If Flash were to be made available to the platform, it would also bring a new channel of application distribution, and Apple refuses to let that happen.

The bottom line is that Apple is looking toward the future and focusing on new standards in the industry. It views Flash as outdated technology that is processor-hungry and full of security holes.

The new HTML5 technology is much more robust, efficient and will eventually become the widely accepted standard.

Michael Padon is an engineering sophomore and may be reached at [email protected]