“When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad on Wednesday, his live demonstrations with the device clearly showed the Safari browser was not capable of playing Adobe Flash. However, promotional images on Apple’s Web site show that same content loading just fine,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“One in a series of rotating images on Apple’s main page shows a story from The New York Times, entitled “The 31 Places to Go in 2010.” In the image, a picture of a beach in Montenegro is shown. The picture is part of 17 images displayed at the top of the story in Flash,” Hughes reports. “When accessing that same page on an iPhone, the images do not load. Instead, it says ‘In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here,’ with a corresponding link.”
“It’s likely the iPad photos are simply renderings of the device, rather than actual screenshots taken of the Web sites,” Hughes reports. “For example, the URL bar for the Times Web site simply shows ‘http://travel.nytimes.com’ rather than the address for the actual story displayed.”
Hughes reports, “Apple has famously shunned Flash, with the Web plugin having no support in the iPhone Safari browser. The company has even encouraged developers to “stick with standards” and use CSS, JavaScript and Ajax instead of Adobe Flash. In short, it’s unlikely that Flash support will exist in the iPad when it ships in two months… While Adobe has pushed for years to have Flash on the iPhone since it launched, Apple has not budged. The company’s rejection of Flash and move towards alternatives such as HTML5 suggest the Web plugin will not likely appear on the iPad.”
Much more, including the promo images, in the full article here.
See also, 9 to 5 Mac’s coverage on the topic here.