Adobe Releases Its Own HTML5 Video Player 139
An anonymous reader writes "Webmonkey has an interesting tidbit about Adobe's release of its own HTML5 video player: 'Adobe has released an embeddable video player that plays HTML5 native video in browsers that support it, and falls back to Flash in browsers that don't. It's cross-browser and cross-platform, so it works on iPhones, iPads and other devices that don't support Flash. Using Adobe's new player, these devices can show videos in web pages without the Flash plug-in.'"
Re:But why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Adobe is not in the business of selling Flash Plugins, they are in the business of selling Flash Authoring Tools and Server Side technology. iTechnology has been selling like crazy, and hate as you may, it has started to result in pages that are designed to run in iDevices.
With all these pages now out there, Flash suddenly becomes optional, it will not take long before Flash's buggy security issues make many to opt out of using Flash and just fall back on the HTML5 pages that were designed for the iDevices. It is wise of them to try to stop the flocking early, avoid people from developing their own home grown HTML5 Plug N Play migration tools, and offer them first.
Once the big players opt to go Adobe's route, they may secure their web authoring dominance in a Flash Free World Wide Web.
Re:But why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because Adobe realizes no matter what they do, HTML5 is the next big "thing". They can either jump on board and try and be at the forefront of it all, making great tools and plug ins, or they can dig themselves in and try to hold back the avalache armed with a shovel. Typically companies that try the dig in approach fail and fail miserably.
Re:But why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't take me wrong, I am a proud owner of an iPhone 3G, an iPad WiFi, an iPod Touch 4G, a Mac Mini, and just got from Best Buy from buying a Powerbook for my wife (her choice, not mine, I insisted she could handle with my current laptop.) This is on top of my Windows Desktop (main system,) Windows Netbook (very effecctive paperweight) and $500 Compaq Laptop (I get what I pay for, it just developed battery incontinence... it poops the battery out every 5 minutes.)
My point? I'm not a mac guy, but at the same time I obviously love my iStuff. I am extremely happy Apple embraced open standards and stood firm against force feed a slow/buggy Flash into their devices.
Not a support issue (Score:5, Interesting)
It's cross-browser and cross-platform, so it works on iPhones, iPads and other devices that don't support Flash.
It would be more accurate to say that iPhones and iPads don't permit Flash. Adobe would be more than happy to support Flash on those platforms -- and probably has code ready to go -- if Apple allowed them to deploy it. The difference is significant and should not be ignored: Flash doesn't work on iDevices because Apple doesn't want it to. It's a repeat of Microsoft's unofficial MSDOS-era policy, "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run," only much, much more brazen.
(Before we resurrect the flamewar about why Apple doesn't allow Flash on its iDevices, allow me to note that I detest Flash and understand Apple's objections, at least the technical ones. I just think that users should be allowed to use whatever software they want on the devices that they've paid for, no matter how much it sucks.)