The tech press looked like real idiots recently.

The usual Apple-watchers got wind that there was a new product in the pipeline, which is pretty much what they sit waiting for. And as is their wont, they started speculating about what the new device would be. What size is it, what hardware spec is it, et cetera, et cetera.

The speculation reached insane levels in the build-up to the day of the announcement, with everyone seemingly getting caught up in it. Some of the outlandish claims made for this new device were actually hilarious, and some were probably not even physically possible.

And then came the announcement.

For an Apple event, it was quite strange – Steve Jobs obviously has very high hopes for this new device, and my feeling is that he has a lot personally invested in this. The reason why it was strange is that usually Apple will meander around boring stuff, and then announce ‘one last thing’ right at the end. This time, Steve Jobs starts off with a hello and how well Apple have been doing in the ‘mobile devices’ market, then went straight into the announcement of the iPad.

And this is when the tech press blew a gasket.

They were expecting a ‘regular’ Apple event, and this time were taken by surprise, because this time Apple were serious. They have a new device and they think it’s a biggie. The entire event was devoted to the iPad: its initial announcement, demonstrations of its capabilities, description of its hardware and finally its price and availability.

That was the entire event. And afterwards, the tech press simply did not know what to think about this new device, described by Steve Jobs as ‘magical’.

They had been expecting something akin to a cure for death, and instead were handed something that is just a computer that is easier to use than everything else out there.

But the techies wanted more! They wanted something with SSD hard drives, card readers, as many cameras as you could shake a stick at … you name a technical feature, and you can bet that someone suggested that the iPad should have it.

After the build-up and hype, you could forgive them for feeling bitter, if it weren’t for one thing: during all the build-up, Apple never said a word about the iPad. Apple were completely silent, except to say that something was coming. That was it. The rest of it – the giant dinosaurs and flying cars (well, you know what I mean) was all made up by the press themselves.

So they heard something was coming, they speculated as to what it could possibly be, blew it all up out of all proportion, and then felt let down afterwards.

Who can they blame: Blame each other? Blame themselves? No, of course not – they blame Apple. More than that, they are now saying the iPad is a flop. Nobody will buy it. They say they don’t see a need for it.

Which to me is astonishing – the thing has not even been released yet, and they are already calling it a flop!

What’s more, they complain that it’s just like an iPhone with a bigger screen. Well excuse me, but I love my iPhone dearly and if I could think of any problems with it, one of them would be that sometimes I would love it even more if it had a bigger screen! So put me down for one, when they come to Thailand.

So why so much hating on the iPad? The press is out for its blood because it made them look like idiots. That’s the only reason I can think of.

There is a debate going on at the moment about Flash. This is a debate that has only really started heating up since Apple announced the iPad and stated that neither it nor the iPhone (and iPod Touch) would be running Flash any time soon.

Adobe countered this very public dismissal of their software by saying that Apple would be denying users of the iPhone/iPad the ability to view ‘most of’ the internet.

I can understand why Adobe would be put out by Apple’s refusal to support their technology, on the back of which they sell their own products, and I can also understand why Apple does not want to support Flash on the iPhone OS (for want of a better name – what else should we call it, MacOS Mobile?).

There are a few things to note about this disagreement:

• Apple has publicly stated that Flash is the only commonly-used (de facto) standard on the web that is entirely proprietary. Flash binaries can only be played by software written by Adobe.
• Adobe has produced a Flash plugin that runs on Apple’s desktop OS for many years. Its performance has always been sluggish when compared to its Windows counterpart.
• Everyone is focusing on the Video aspect of Flash, with hardly a mention of the Flash games that are the mainstay of Facebook and its ilk, and the moving (and sometimes LOUD) ads that are the bane of any user of the internet.
• Whichever aspect of Flash we talk about, it has to be mentioned that the Flash plugin on MacOS crashes. A lot. According to sources within Apple, it is the number one cause of software crashes reported by users.
• The Flash plugin on MacOS is a resource hog. It uses a LOT of CPU, even when just showing static images.

Put all these facts together, and you come up with a ‘standard’ that Apple’s users can only use with a plugin that is written by Adobe, and is buggy and slow. And Adobe has had a long time to fix it.

Adobe’s take on this is that Apple has not given them access to low-level APIs that would allow them to make video faster.

That’s it?

Adobe release a slow, buggy resource-hog of a plugin whose purpose is to play Flash files and Flash video, and say that the reason that it’s so slow is that Apple don’t allow them access to private APIs that would make video faster.

I don’t buy it.

If we were just talking about video playback (for which alternatives are starting to emerge – HTML5′s video tag is now supported by several browsers, on MacOS and Windows, although it’s not yet quite ready), then I would concede that it could have an effect on the performance.

But they are completely sidestepping the issue of the plugin’s tendency to crash and its propensity for CPU-munching. Battery life on a MacBook Pro can be as much as halved, just by reading a web page that has a single Flash ad at the top. Open the page, and fans come on. It’s not pretty.

Steve Jobs calls Adobe ‘lazy’ for their attitude towards Flash on MacOS, and since it has existed for so long you would have to agree with him. Although to be fair to Adobe, they only bought the technology a few years ago.

A few years. And it’s still a buggy resource hog.

Yeah, lazy could be a fair assessment.