Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has grown massively and arguably has the coolest products on the market from iPads to iPhones and on. As the company has grown and grown, it has also become much more heavy-handed and is involved in many more patent cases and has been fighting over what the standard of the future should be for online media. Its war with Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) is proof that Apple is trying to force its way or the highway. Now iPhone and iPad users are showing some solid proof that Steve Jobs needs to go a bit softer on Adobe and its Flash. This morning a company called Skyfire had to stop selling its app that allowed users to play Flash videos. The company has such strong demand that its servers became overloaded and it had to interrupt selling the app.
SkyFire 2.0 shows… “Vibrant Video…watch videos – even Flash! – on your favorite sites.” The company claimed that in just 5 hours it became the top grossing app for the iPhone, and it was the third highest paid app overall as well as the top app in the utilities category.
“Skyfire for iPhone has been received with unbelievable enthusiasm. Despite our best attempts and predictions, the demand far exceeds our initial projections… The user experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade… Thus we are effectively ‘sold out’ and will temporarily not accept new purchases from the App Store. We are working really hard to increase capacity and will be accepting new purchases from the App Store as soon as we can support it.”
We have been critical of Steve Jobs and his stance toward Adobe over Flash. This action and war has been somewhat similar to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) business practices in the 1990’s and that company had to change its ways by force. For some reason the public has taken the attitude that it is OK for Apple to be this way because “after all, it’s Apple and they are cool.”
If this is not a show of force that iPhone users and iPad users really do want Flash, then nothing else is. For some of the complex websites to retool around Flash is effectively forcing them to rework their whole website. Steve Jobs could cost businesses and individuals untold millions and millions of dollars over his Flash stance.
Maybe many Apple customers do not care if Flash is allowed or not. It is obvious that many do.
JON C. OGG
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