Within the last several years, Adobe Flash became the dominant format for embedding video on the Web because Adobe Flash Player was free and available on a variety of different platforms and operating systems. However in April 2010, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, explained that Apple would not support Flash on its mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Among the reasons cited, Jobs included his concerns that a) Flash was proprietary, a fact that inhibits the future development of multimedia on the Web; b) Flash was not secure or reliable and adversely affects the performance of mobile devices; c) Flash was a significant drain on battery life; and d) Flash was designed for PCs using a mouse interface and could not be adapted to the touch interface found on mobile devices. Rather than relying on Flash, Jobs advocated the continuing development of open standards for Web video including the rapid adoption of HTML5.    However, thousands of Web sites had made considerable investments in Flash and were not happy with the prospect of significantly retooling their sites. In response, in March 2011, Adobe released a tool to convert Flash files to HTML5-compatible formats so they run on Apple's mobile devices. Also, Flash is supported on several mobile operating systems, such as the Android platform for mobile devices.    Users running older browsers will not be able to use HTML5 video; so for complete cross-browser support, you'll make a Flash version of the Royal Wedding clip available to users. Maxine has created an Adobe Flash Player file named rwdance.swf containing both the video clip and the controls to run it. Does Jobs have a point?  Is it better for web developers to rely on one proprietary means of displaying video?  Is it best to have a standard?  If so, how should a standard be developed? If not, what's better about varied means? .

1. Within the last several years, Adobe Flash became the dominant
format for embedding video on the Web because Adobe Flash
Player was free and available on a variety of different platforms
and operating systems. However in April 2010, Steve Jobs, CEO
of Apple, explained that Apple would not support Flash on its
mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Among
the reasons cited, Jobs included his concerns that a) Flash was
proprietary, a fact that inhibits the future development of
multimedia on the Web; b) Flash was not secure or reliable and
adversely affects the performance of mobile devices; c) Flash
was a significant drain on battery life; and d) Flash was
designed for PCs using a mouse interface and could not be
adapted to the touch interface found on mobile devices. Rather
than relying on Flash, Jobs advocated the continuing
development of open standards for Web video including the
rapid adoption of HTML5.
However, thousands of Web sites had made considerable
investments in Flash and were not happy with the prospect of
significantly retooling their sites. In response, in March 2011,
Adobe released a tool to convert Flash files to HTML5-
compatible formats so they run on Apple's mobile devices. Also,
Flash is supported on several mobile operating systems, such as
the Android platform for mobile devices.
Users running older browsers will not be able to use HTML5
video; so for complete cross-browser support, you'll make a
Flash version of the
Royal Wedding
clip available to users. Maxine has created an Adobe Flash
Player file named
rwdance.swf
containing both the video clip and the controls to run it.

2. Does Jobs have a point? Is it better for web developers to rely
on one proprietary means of displaying video? Is it best to have
a standard? If so, how should a standard be developed? If not,
what's better about varied means?