This came up in an image search for 'Flash' and 'Apple'.
There are many articles and blog posts about the brewing fight between Apple and Adobe over flash. There’s usually one of two takes on the subject. The first is about why Adobe or Apple are in the right about the fight. The second is a discussion about the technical merits of HTML 5 video, Flash video, and the like.
None of this really matters to the bulk of digital media professionals, though. In fact, the only thing that really matters is what the consequences of this fight mean to the people who have to make the blogs, the websites, the applications, and more for all the users out there who don’t care about who “wins” in this latest iteration of web wars.
The short version: If you’re running video on the web, make flash websites, have existing legacy flash sites, and more, be prepared to build a different version of your site for these other platforms. If this concept feels familiar, it is. It’s the latest iteration of broadband vs. dial-up websites, Windows Vs. Quicktime Vs. Real, Mobile Vs. Web, and more. In 12 to 18 months, there may be another ‘battle’ over standards, formats, and the like, and this current ‘battle’ will have likely been settled for a short time. In the interim, though, be ready for some early 2000 style web chaos.
The long version: A lot of this is really about Mobile Video and how it’s monetized
Ultimately, I’m convinced that this fight is really about video on the web. If you are running video on the web, you are basically one of two types of publisher. You either earn (or seek to earn) money from the video content directly, or from ads placed before, during, after and around a video.
If your goal is a direct sale of some kind, more than likely you are trying to reach as many people as possible with a high quality version of your video. Maybe the end goal is a DVD sale. Or a sale through iTunes. Or a sale through your own website. All three of these scenarios transfer a file from your business to another computer for that other person to use at will. We can skip the worry about file transfers, caching, etc, because most users can’t or won’t bother to get those files, assuming that the player codec didn’t just scrub them to begin with.
File formats and how they are played on a client browser or desktop are an important consideration. Go back to 2001. 9 years ago, trying to decide what format to play your video in, on what players, was a major consideration. Is this formatted in Real? Windows Media? QuickTime? Do we create video versions of all the formats, at lots of different sizes, or just a few?
In the end, you had lots of files of varying quality.
Fast forward a few years. Adobe Flash, going back to its roots in a sense, introduces their own video format. For a brief time, flash video is ubiquitous. YouTube would not exist without Flash video. Hulu would also not exist without Flash video. There’s a brief window where worrying about what type of video you’re serving is halted.
Sort of. While web publishers had semi-settled on Flash Video as a pseudostandard (, Mobile video had a different standard, .3gp, that is supported but not widely implemented in the United States. Apple is just one of many handset makers that don’t support Flash 10 (although, granted, some of them support Flash Lite).
The big advantage of Flash Video was the (relatively speaking) easy programmability. You could use the platform to make add banners. You could program a video player for pre-roll, post-roll and ad insertions. All kinds of neat tricks were possible with the platform.
However, the ubiquity of streaming, ad-based video is in direct competition with a pay-per-use model. In other words, why would a consumer buy a video file if you can watch it for ‘free’ on a website somewhere? In a way, it’s like a web version of arguments over home video versus broadcast video, cable vs. movies, and more.
In other words, Adobe Vs. Apple? For most of the professionals out there, the only stake in the fire is choosing the direction to spend resources in developing our new offerings.
Advice for anyone doing Video on the web: Unless you really need your own platform to serve ads, use a 3rd party offering like YouTube, Vimeo or Brightcove to serve your video. If you do need your own platform, tread carefully, because the developers are all about to party like it’s 1999.
And keep an eye out for what google does. A company that size, that wants open standards for everything, just may get their way in the end. Which will make all of these skirmishes seem silly a few years down the line.