> “We believe that the native browser experience is the best reading experience for documents” as opposed to Flash, which requires duplicating browser functionality inside a browser, Friedman said. Scribd users will get such functionalities as search, zoom, and scrolling via HTML5, he said. > > “Previously, the Flash application needed to provide all that functionality itself, which meant that users had to learn and work with a whole new interface in order to manipulate what they were reading,” said Friedman. > > While Scribd is primarily a consumer site, it does have an enterprise business following, with uses like the downloading of business documents and document-sharing. “Scribd is the largest social publishing and reading site on the Web,” Friedman said. > > Documents on Scribd will be Apple iPad-friendly. Users will be able to read Scribd documents on handheld devices via HTML5. I asked before how long it would take sites to go from Flash only, to Flash on the Desktop and alternate version in HTML5 on the iPad, to just HTML5 for both.

Looks like the answer was a little over a month, at least for the first couple of sites. Expect an accelerating trend.

So now someone will have to create a graph showing the decline of IE vs. the decline of Flash. I can’t wait to see which one falls below 20% first.

The reason why Apple is winning this fight, by the way, has nothing to do with monopolies. Apple is just playing the game better. Rather than forcing people to make sites in a special way that would only work on the iPhone or iPad, they gave everyone an easy alternative (HTML5) that works everywhere. It’s the multi-platform “open specification” that Adobe claims Flash is. Write once, run everywhere.

And HTML5 actually works everywhere. Unlike Flash, which is still absent on all mobile devices, not just Apple’s.

At the end of the day, the fault for Flash’s demise will rest entirely with Adobe, because they couldn’t get their code in order three years ago, and because they lacked the vision to see mobile coming. They thought they had the desktop locked up, and that’s all that would matter. Hubris. Plain and simple.

> “The technology issue I think Apple has with us is not that it does work, but when it does work,” he said. “We don’t want to play technology games when Apple is playing a legal game. We’re focusing on everybody else. There’s a huge wave of innovation, there’s going to be a wide range of devices.” > > Lynch went on to mention the Open Screen Project, which he said has more than 70 partners working with Adobe, and he believes great innovation will come from it starting in the second half of this year. > > “All the innovation coming from all those companies will dwarf what’s coming from the one company that isn’t participating,” he said. > > Lynch also said that Adobe has big plans for HTML5, even though the Web standard and its inclusion of streaming video technology are widely viewed as a competitor to Flash. He said Adobe would create “the best tools in the world” for those looking to make content via HTML5. Adobe is still talking to developers instead of users.

Users don’t care if different railroads use different sized tracks. They only care if the train gets them where they are going on time, and how comfortable the ride is.

Developers, at the same time, may care about things that make their lives easier, but at the end of the day, they go where the money is. And Apple is where the money is right now. All the cross platform tools in the world aren’t going to help if you can only use them to develop for platforms that don’t compete.

I particularly like this quote: “All the innovation coming from all those companies will dwarf what’s coming from the one company that isn’t participating.” To date, the opposite has been true. ALL of the innovation has been coming from Apple, and almost NONE from anywhere else. I’ve seen nothing to suggest that will change anytime soon, either.

As far as HTML5 goes, Adobe has shown exactly where HTML5 lies in its list of priorities by including NO HTML5 features in Dreamweaver CS5.

Time to stop talking and start doing, Adobe. Get Flash shipped on a mobile device of any sort, and then we can talk.

> Of the 20 lost percentage points, nearly nine were earned by Firefox, which now has nearly 25% share. Another nine were taken by WebKit browsers: two and a half were eaten up by Apple’s Safari (to reach 4.72% share), while Google’s Chrome expanded to take 6.7% (from zero prior to 2009). Opera gained nearly a percentage point in the same period (to reach 2.3%). > > Statistics [published](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200904-201005-bar) by StatCounter were even less flattering for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which was ranked at a 56.57% share, with Firefox closing in with 31.29%, followed by 5.35% for Chrome, 3.63% for Safari and 2.25% for Opera. Remember, it’s all about momentum. Like throwing a ball up into the air. Slowing growth usually takes some time. But once a product ends up in decline, as IE clearly is now, the decline usually accelerates. Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 sales aren’t going to change the tide for IE. It’s on its way down.

This means that Bing is effectively not going anywhere, since the only place Microsoft can push Bing on unsuspecting users is in IE. It also means that Silverlight is not going anywhere, either. Nor Windows Live. And on and on.

As I’ve said before, Microsoft is on its way to losing its entire consumer market. In a few years, all it will have left is the Windows OS and Office. That’s plenty to remain a very large and profitable business for years to come, but as far as Microsoft remaining relevant to new technology, the game is over.

> It is this prescient and necessarily restrained motivation that reveals the true reason why Apple has closed up tighter over the last few years: it’s not to take control of the world. It’s specifically to separate themselves from a pack of companies they *need* as their competitors but *want* relegated to the lower margin areas of the market. Apple will stay closed as long as being closed is a net positive to their business. Until people either start abandoning their products because of this or the do the opposite and adopt their products at a rate which creates a monopoly, they will continue operating at their current clip: high innovation, high profits, and high control. Great article on Apple. Specifically, why Apple’s sudden success won’t lead to another Microsoft Monopoly.

I agree that Apple not only doesn’t have a monopoly, but is actively trying to avoid becoming a monopoly. Not only to stay out of anti-trust issues, but more importantly because Apple sees itself as an elite brand. They don’t want cheap people with bad taste to buy their products.

> The 3.5″ 1.44MB HD floppy may finally be going gentle into that good night. Sony, one of just a few companies that still produce the archaic computer storage media, has announced plans to [end production of floppies](http://www.macworld.com/article/150837/2010/04/floppydisk.html "Macworld: Sony to end floppy disk production") in March 2011. If you still don’t understand why Apple is fighting tooth and nail to make sure Flash never makes it to the iPad or iPhone, look no further than this article.

Apple introduced its first computer without a floppy drive (the original iMac) in 1997.

Thirteen years later, floppies are still in production. Killing old technology is really hard, and it takes a brave stance by a company willing to take risks.

If the iMac had shipped with a floppy drive, I guarantee we’d all still have floppy disk drives on all of our computers. Despite the fact that you’d be hard pressed to fit a Word Document onto one of those things.

Someone has to lead the way by advancing technology, rather than keeping the status quo. When a better way presents itself, you need to encourage people to start using it—by force, if necessary.