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In advance of the iPad’s April 3 debut, Apple is showing off a number of Websites that are “iPad ready”-which is to say, instead of Flash technology, they’re built with W3C standard Web technology and use HTML5 video, CSS3 and JavaScript.
To play with Apple is to play by Apple’s rules, and several big brands have shown they’re happy to do just that-and enjoy the massive app-buying crowds likely to follow.
Among these iPad-ready sites are those for CNN, The New York Times, the White House’s official page and the TED talks. If your site has also eschewed Flash for “the latest Web standards,” writes Apple, you’re encouraged to let Apple know about it, along with details about your site, and it, too, may be featured.
While Flash is a widely accepted technology for videos and ads-Google plans to include it in its Chrome browser-Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made no secret of his disdain for it, calling it buggy and a CPU hog.
“We don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology,” Jobs reportedly told Wall Street Journal executives in February, during a meeting to try to make them repent of their Flash-supporting ways. Jobs is said to have compared Flash to floppy drives and compact discs-technologies past their glory days.
Countless Websites are still relying on Flash, and once the iPad finds its way into Web-surfing consumer hands on April 3, they’ll know a Flash-supporting Website when they see one.
“Apple has this thing against Flash, the Web’s most popular video format; says it’s buggy, it’s not secure and depletes the battery,” The New York Times’ David Pogue wrote in his March 31 hands-on review of the iPad. “Well, fine, but meanwhile, thousands of Websites show up with empty white shares on the iPad-places where videos or animations are supposed to play.”
The iPad will officially go on sale April 3, though supply levels have been recently questioned. On the Apple site, WiFi-only models are said to not start shipping until April 12. On March 29, however, Twitter was aflutter with the announcements of happy consumers-who’d put in early preorders for the device-writing that Apple had alerted them that their iPads were on their way.