Apple Dimming Flash's Outlook?Apple Dimming Flash's Outlook?

The iPhone has been a game changer in the mobile space. With its world class mobile browser, it opened up the internet for the first time to true web browsing rather than running data through proxy servers that reformatted the data or anemic browsers that tried to reformat it for you so it would work on the small screens. One area that it, and its bigger brother the iPad, still can't do is Flash, but that may not matter as much anymore.When the iPhone launched, it was an immediate success but it definitely had its shortcomings. It lacked MMS, multitasking, native apps, Flash support, 3G speeds and more. Most of these have since been fixed. Multitasking may make its debut with the fourth version expected this summer, but Flash is still nowhere to be seen. The new iPad, just launched two days ago, also lacks Flash. This isn't a technical issue, it is a religious one. It is a platform in and of itself and that means Apple would lose control over what you could put on the device as the App Store could be bypassed entirely.

This doesn't mean, however, that iPhone and iPad users are missing out. Quite the contrary. According to Gizmodo, the internet is changing to accommodate these Flashless devices. Gizmodo notes that the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and National Public Radio sites are all making mobile sites sans Flash to improve the user experience. Flash driven sites like YouTube are also experimenting with HTML5 to replace Flash for videos.

I am sure Flash will continue to be around for a long time to come, but Apple may be making enough of a difference to webmasters to ensure that if they want their content viewed on the iPhone or iPad, they will need to rethink how they use Flash on their site, if at all.