Apple Cheers As ‘iPad-Ready’ Sites Offer Flash-Free Option

As its iPad launched on Saturday, Apple applauded a number of site that have made themselves “iPad ready” which are playing by Apple’s rules, and abandoning the widely-used Flash video technology in hopes of welcoming hordes of app-buying iPad users.

While Adobe’s Flash is a widely accepted technology for videos and ads — Google plans to include it in its Chrome browser — Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made no secret of his disdain for it, calling it buggy and a CPU hog. Before the Aprile 3 launch of the iPad, Apple showed off a number of Websites that are “iPad ready”—which is to say, instead of Flash technology, they’re built with W3C standard Web technology and use HTML5 video, CSS3 and JavaScript.

Among the iPad-ready sites on Apple’s list are those for CNN, The New York Times, the White House’s official page and the TED talks. If your site has also eschewed Flash for “the latest Web standards,” writes Apple, you’re encouraged to let Apple know about it, along with details about your site, and it, too, may be featured.

Flash is history, says Jobs

“We don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology,” Jobs reportedly told Wall Street Journal executives in February, during a meeting to try to make them repent of their Flash-supporting ways. Jobs is said to have compared Flash to floppy drives and compact disks—technologies past their glory days.

Countless Websites are still relying on Flash, and as the iPad finds its way into Web-surfing consumer hands, they’ll know a Flash-supporting Website when they see one.

“Apple has this thing against Flash, the Web’s most popular video format; says it’s buggy, it’s not secure and depletes the battery,” David Pogue wrote in his March 31 hands-on review of the iPad, for the iPad-ready New York Times. “Well, fine, but meanwhile, thousands of Websites show up with empty white shares on the iPad—places where videos or animations are supposed to play.”

As the iPad launched, questions were raised over supply levels. On the Apple site, Wi-Fi only models are said to not start shipping until April 12. On March 29, however, Twitter was aflutter with the announcements of happy consumers — who’d put in early preorders for the device — writing that Apple had alerted them that their iPads were on their way.