iPad Throttled

31Jul10

I’ve been spending a little time with a borrowed iPad, just to see what I think.  Like many before me I’ve wondered what the iPad would be used for.  After the first couple of days, I decided I really liked the clear screen, that it was great for those ‘between’ times – having a coffee between meetings, or relaxing in bed before sleep.  The iPhone is good, but doesn’t have quite a big enough screen for reading newspapers (particularly photo-articles) or catching up with TV programmes I’ve missed.  So, I used the iPad the other night to watch Britain by Bike on BBC iPlayer and I thought, “Fantastic, this is what I’ll use it for”.

I was excited… for about half a day.  Then, I tried to pull up a couple of YouTube videos and some programmes on 4od (which has an excellent back catalogue of shows, btw) and…. nothing, nada, zilch.  None of the stuff I wanted to see was available as non-Flash video.  Imagine – all this really good stuff on YouTube, 4od, and many other websites and I can’t see it.  Frustrating.  I love my iPhone and it doesn’t bother me not having Flash because I don’t tend to use that for video – I like it for quick on-the-go tasks; reading emails, pulling up Google Maps to find a building, quick scanning my RSS feeds, listening to music, phoning people.  It wouldn’t matter if the iPad excelled at these things, too – my iPhone is easier and lighter to handle, so I’ll always be using it for those things.

I know all about Apple’s arguments about Flash – it’s not as secure, it’s terrible for battery life etc, – I’m sure they are all reasonably sound arguments, even though other Smartphone manufacturers are allowing it.  But, when it comes down to using the device, all these reasonable arguments don’t matter a jot to me.  Without Flash, the iPad is throttled.  Apple can wax all day long about HTML5, but it’s going to be some time before websites switch over, and that’s too long to be without the ability to watch all that streaming video.  It’s incredibly arrogant of Apple to expect websites to switch to HTML5 right now just because they think they’re right.

So here’s my message to Apple – you don’t have to endorse Flash, but you should be giving your customers the choice.  If we want to have Flash, we should be able to, without having to jailbreak our devices (and without invalidating our warranties). End of.

Advertisement

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment