This time, according to reports, it’s CBS.com. Considering the manner in which they make their TV shows available, by itself this is excellent news.
The bigger deal of course is that it’s part of a large and ongoing trend. Whether swapping from Flash to HTML5 outright (or in part), or developing iPad specific apps (hello NPR, WSJ), it seems that some pretty high higher-ups have seen the writing on the wall. It says:
“Ignore the iPad at your own peril!”
The iPad Alone 
When Jobs gave his initial presentation and began browsing, he hung WAY too long on the page that gave the little ‘no Flash” box. Every single thing about his presentations are calculated. There is no way he would not only go to a page with a flash error by mistake, then linger on it for almost 5 seconds.
He knew what he was doing. It sparked a debate and now look what’s happening. Genius.
Yep, he was able to make his point without a word spoken.
+2. Completely agreed. Not remotely accidental, and spoke volumes!!
Yeah, with all the negative performance issues of Flash, complaining that the iPad can’t handle it seems a bit like bemoaning that CD players don’t also play cassette tapes. Flash is old technology that is being replaced by HTML5. Once again, the shortsighted critics have underestimated Apple’s power to move technology forward.
Apple has said we’re moving forward with a better technology and it would behoove others to follow, and quickly, lest they become anachronisms. Sure it was a bit of a gamble for Apple, but they were in a unique position to foresee the multi-media appeal of the iPad and knew that this new device could give content creators that final push to move to HTML5 sooner rather than later.
The smart-money has seen the future and it ain’t a flash-based one.
One of the forums posts pointed out that nbc.com currently works on an iPhone and so of course will also work on the iPad. I didn’t realize that. It seems pretty clear that we’re quickly headed to yet another ‘most of the people most of the time’ kind of scenario. Youtube, the networks, major periodicals, etc.
I’m sure Flash will unfortunately linger for some time. But it’s obvious that it’ll be increasingly fringy over time…
Great news! Hopefully the rest will follow. If you check out NBC.com on the iPhone, you can stream full tv shows. So I guess NBC.com is ahead of the game is pretty much ready for the iPad.
Yup thanks! I’d seen that elsewhere about NBC. If Fox and ABC drop, then b/t them and YouTube an awful lot of content will be readily available…