The Impact of Tablets on
Information Availability
User Interfaces
New Interaction Standards Shape the Way We Access Content
At the highest level, our sense of sight, touch, hearing, etc are required to gather and manipulate information. A device's interface is the tunnel through which information is made available to our senses, so clearly any analysis of how tablets affect information availability necessarily includes a discussion of its interface. Whoever has control over a device's interface, then, has control over what content users consume. This article investigates who holds power over tablet user interfaces and how they do so.
Apple iPad vs. Adobe Flash:
Steve Jobs explains why the iPad doesn't include support for flash in his article "Thoughts on Flash." Flash, he says, is impractical in terms of security and performance. It's too slow and drains the iPad battery. Jobs says that most the important factor, however is that flash doesn't work well with touch interactions. Professional Flash developer Daniel Rean Dilger agrees. The fundamental problem with getting flash sites to work on the iPad, he says, is that Flash sites are "coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking" and that this distinction is "fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content." He argues that it simply isn't practical to use flash to make a site that would be compatible with both a mouse and a touch screen.
Many people attack Apple's decision to exclude flash, saying that their motivation is monopolistic and competitive. "Apple has eliminated any way to get content on the device that they don't own," says Adobe developer Adrian Ludwig. Adobe has worked to get flash running on other mobile platforms by Google, Nokia, and HTC. "We've been seeing great performance on similar devices," says Ludwig. He says that the iPad's "hardware is very capable." If flash were available on the iPad then users would have access to countless free flash games and be able to watch TV shows for free on Hulu. By eliminating flash, Ludwig says that google is able to secure it's revenue from mobile apps and movies.
No matter which side of the debate you are on, it is clear that not supporting flash is just one of many ways that Apple maintains control of the content available to its users.