Of course, HTML 5 doesn’t actually exist – parts of it do, but the standard won’t even be complete for a decade yet, and important things like how to play audio and video are still undefined. They can’t even agree on simple things like a default video format, for Og’s sake.
It’s a neat technology, and parts of it really do seem to be nailed down, as de facto if not real standards, but it’s hardly the complete environment that Apple, Microsoft, and Google like to pretend it is.
Just to be technically accurate: Apple doesn’t disallow Flash, per se on the iOS. Flash just gets all the press. In actuality, Apple disallows plugins in general. You don’t see Silverlight, Ad-blockers, or video format plugins there, either. And from playing with the other tablets that are advertising Flash support, it appears that Apple is correct: the experience is uniformly miserable.
Plugins are just to heavy-weight for such low-powered platforms, and the whole “write once” nature of flash, et. al is pretty much negated by an environment that doesn’t have the concept of “mouse movements” separate from clicks. And not supporting them makes for a much lighter weight and more robust browser.
Plugins also violate Apple’s rule about executing code that’s been downloaded from the internet without verification, which is just their basic Malware prevention stance. I really, really, don’t see this changing. People are voting with their wallets that it doesn’t matter, in numbers that are absolutely dwarfing the other tablets.
I had an opportunity to play with the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 a few weeks ago when I attended a symposium in California, and the Flash on that was analogous to the Flash experience I’ve had on any laptop or desktop; not sluggish or laggy. So, if Google’s Honeycomb can integrate it seemingly very well, I don’t know why Apple’s iOS would have any trouble at all with it. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 goes on sale June 8, and my company is picking up a few of them. I can’t wait to do my own head-to-head comparison between it and the iPad2.
I just use a combination of HTML 5 sites/Iswifter/Splashtop to access my flash content. Splashtop is an app I could not do without. With the new gmail support on the latest version, I have remote access to my desktop anywhere I go (though that particular feature is still Beta)!