HTML5 vs Flash!

This morning I saw the Adobe CEO Shantanu's interview in GiGaOM here and thought of writing a short blog about my opinion about Flash vs HTML-5.

Note: I like both A's. (Apple & Adobe). I use everyday PDF on my Mac. So, I have no bias towards either company.

Flash vs HTML-5.

Let's take a look at some facts. We should leave both A's out and just look at the history & consumers.

[a] Consumers don't care about whether it's Flash or HTML5 in their devices. Simply because they don't know about it. (ask your grandma if you are not sure!) They just need a good viewing experience.

[b]From history book: Open Standard vs Proprietary Technology- Open Standard always wins.
Let's take an interesting example. Now Apple fights a proprietary technology(Flash) with a open standard.(HTML5). But in the past, it was other way around- AppleTalk vs TCP/IP.

"AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of protocols developed by Apple Inc. for networking computers. It was included in the original Macintosh released in 1984, and is now unsupported with the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009[1] in favor of TCP/IP networking." - Wikipedia

It's not just AppleTalk & there were other proprietary standards like IPX/SPX, etc are also out. Today the internet runs on top of TCP/IP. Imagine, if we still have all those proprietary networking protocols...my Mac can't talk to your Windows!

Summary
Proprietary standards are mostly like driving car by looking at the rear-view mirror and open standards are driving car by looking at the road ahead. As I said before here, HTML 5 is one of the most important next generation web technology and it will eventually become mainstream.