People Really Don’t Care About Flash
Dear Steve Jobs,
You’ve already sold a bunch of iPads. Congratulations. For offering millions of people good gadgets that add to their lives, you sometimes miss the mark on what they really care about. I’m relying on TechCrunch’s coverage of your interview at D8, so maybe I misinterpreted. You seem to think iPad buyers rejected Flash by buying your tablet computer:
Jobs did say that if the market tells them they’re making bad choices, they’ll change. But so far, that isn’t happening. “People seem to be liking the iPad,” Jobs said to laughs and applause. “We’ve sold one every three seconds since we launched it,” he added.
You’re wrong about the public voting on Flash using an iPad ballot. It doesn’t matter if the iPad supported Flash or not, people would still have bought one. iPad owners were thinking about what they could do with the device: web surf; watch videos; send e-mail; light document editing; read e-books. They don’t care what the underlying technology is. Most wouldn’t know what Flash is or the spat Apple is having with Adobe over it. Heck, the iPad could be powered by magical, invisible greyhounds that feed on nuclear waste. As long as the device functioned the way it does in the svelte package it’s in people would crave it.
Beyond the rarefied world of tech weblogs, people just want gadgets that add value to their lives. They really don’t care how it happens.
Love,
Sean
P.S. Oh, that crack about not wanting “to see us descend into a nation of bloggers,” that’s another unforced error.
You are right, a lot of people could care less if it is Flash, or Ming running the application, but a lot of applications and sites run Flash content and when they attempt to find a plugin (or whatever the Mac lingo is) for that content and they find nothing they will not be happy.