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Apple’s misleads on iPad Flash capabilities, draws FTC complaint

By: , IntoMobile
Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 3:27 PM

ipad-nytThe lack of Adobe Flash support on the iPad is causing Apple some grief this week. Not only has Adobe implied that your iPad fapping [definition] sessions won’t be as fulfilling with support for Flash-based porn sites, one potential iPad customer has filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission that calls Apple out for displaying Flash-based content on iPad promotional materials. Apple has been flaunting the iPad all over the web recently, but as web designer Paul Threatt (a damn cool surname) pointed out to the FTC, it’s been showing off websites as if the device supports Adobe’s Flash technology. It doesn’t, and that’s the problem.

Whether or not you believe Flash support is a critical feature in a web-surfing tablet, or that Flash needs to die off and bequeath its hold over rich web media to HTML5, there’s no denying that it’s wrong to mislead consumers into thinking that websites using Flash media will render properly on the iPad. That’s exactly why Threatt filed his complaint with the FTC. “I don’t hold anything against them for not supporting Flash,” said Threatt. “It’d be great if they did, but what I don’t want them to do is misrepresent the device’s capabilities.”

In his iPad announcement demo, Steve Jobs showed off the iPad browsing the full New York Times website without any of its Flash content displayed – showing instead a missing plugin icon. A subsequent promo video then showed the iPad browsing the NYT website complete with Flash content. Apple apparently does this in several iPad ads, and folks like Mr. Threatt are crying foul over Apple’s false advertisements.

We’ll have to wait and see what action the FTC takes on Threatt’s complaint. This could get interesting.

[Update]
Apple isn’t waiting for an official FTC inquiry. MacRumors reports that Apple has already pulled Flash content from their iPad promo materials. All Flash content is now replaced with the all-too-familiar little blue lego icons that indicate that Flash is not supported on your browser/device.

[Via: ITWorld]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • Karl

    Why doesn’t Apple just support Flash?

  • Will Park

    Steve Jobs says that it’s too slow and resource hungry, but who knows what the real reason is. Apple is betting on HTML5 killing off Flash.

  • Richard

    Apple also wants you to pay for your games, shows and movies using iTunes not get it for free with flash based sites.

  • Dont want Flash

    @Will: You’re right. Apple knows that including Flash support now will only prolong the agony of Flash on the web and will be outdated when HTML 5 goes mainstream.

    @Karl: It requires the Flash plugin to be installed. Then it can have all sorts of issues with performance on the mobile device then the unexpected crashing. Plus Flash has its own coding language it runs and this is not controllable by the system.

  • Mace

    It is just another way for Apple to get money. Instead of using free Flash-applications people need to buy separate apps for each from their store. It’s all about money.

  • Chris P

    I might be wrong but wouldnt apple have to pay rather a lot to use flash on their products? I believe this is the reason.

  • Alex Boutros

    Anything Apple might have to pay to Adobe would be mere pocket change for them. Like Mace said, it's all about money.