NBC & Time Warner Sticking With Flash – Is This Fight Getting Old Yet?


Apparently, Apple versus Adobe is the tech field’s Chevy versus Ford. I, for one, am pretty tired of reading about this petty crap, so I’ve decided to stay away from reporting it for the most part. That was the case anyways, until yesterday. Time to address it, I suppose.

The NY Post is reporting that Time Warner and NBC Universal are going to keep their online offerings in Flash and not rewrite the code for another option because it will cost them money.

Though the iPad has been a huge hit, media companies are feeling emboldened in their rebuffing of Apple by the launch of rival touch-screen tablet devices, such as the ones coming from Dell Computer and Hewlett-Packard, sources said.

In addition, one media executive pointed out that Apple’s ability to dictate terms to the media giants will be weakened further by Google TV, a software product that enables viewers to watch online video on their big-screen TVs.

Read: “We’re not betting on Apple, we’re going to put our money on Google to save us with a product that as of right now is vaporware.”

Look, here’s the deal. Times change. Flash will not be the only way people consumer video on the web for all eternity. Standards change. Formats change. Eventually, something better than Flash will come along and we’ll all use that instead. Some say it’s the new HTML5 standards, others may bet on something else. Whatever it is, Flash will not be the only option forever, just like iTunes will not be the only way we consume our music and movies. Things change.

The problem is when those things change, not everyone is cool with the way the transition is handled. From my perspective, Flash is handling this like a big baby. It took them until CS5 to come up with a system that was coded specifically for the Intel processors, three years after the fact. And CS4 is great – if you like programs that crash all the time and hog resources. Apple isn’t innocent in this situation, either. I completely get why they’re doing this: Apple isn’t willing to work Flash into their OS because Adobe has proven to them, time after time, that they won’t keep up with their own technologies at Apple’s pace. As a result, screw them. It’s that last part that’s working people the wrong way, and making Apple appear like a bully to poor, innocent Adobe.

Here’s the facts: Most people out there have no idea what Adobe Flash is. They may know that they’ve needed a Flash player to watch that porn they downloaded, but they don’t necessarily know what it is. So to them, Apple is the bad guy, telling them they can’t have something that they’re not sure they want. Meanwhile, millions of people have been using iPhones for years now, all without Flash. Tell me, how many of them are complaining? I’m not, and I don’t know too many people who are.

I’m tired of this argument. If NBC and Time Warner don’t want to change over then let them stay with Flash. 5 years from now they’ll be recoding their libraries anyways to match some other new technology anyways, and they’ll just be one more step behind the curve. And when that happens, and it cuts into their profits, then it’s their own fault. As for Apple, I think they should stop talking about this. They’ve spoken their final words, so let’s leave this sleeping dog to die.

And with that, I’m now done talking about Flash.

Until the next time it’s news, I suppose.


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

6 Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  1. “It took them until CS5 to come up with a system that was coded specifically for the Intel processors, three years after the fact.”

    Three years? Apple announced it was dropping PowerPC at WWDC in the summer of 2005, shipped Intel boxes to developers that same year and released Intel-based machines to the public in January 2006. So in my book, thats half a decade(!), which equates to ‘forever-and-a-day’ by any measure, moreso in the tech world.

  2. Nobody needs NBC or Time Warner. If there were huge interest in their content, Apple or a 3rd party would just write a transcoder and get the content, whether NBC or TW and fix the problem technologically. It’s just junk that plays for free on the TV, anyway.

  3. That’s true n the other fact is, most ppl don’t even care what technology something is running on – they just want it to work. So it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s running on Flash, HTML7, Cobol, or a bunch of hamsters running it.

    A few of my friends wouldn’t get an iPad simply because they couldn’t play farmVille on it. I told them it’s because flash isn’t supported to which they retorted back saying, “I don’t care what flash is, I just want to play farmVille”

  4. They’ll change things when they need to and makes sense for them, instead of when it suits Apple. It’s as simple as that, and why shouldn’t it be so?