Condé Nast gearing for iPad, But Is Caught in the Adobe vs. Apple Flash Fire

Condé Nast, who some of you may not know is the producer of the prominent and popular publications such as GQ, Wired, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Glamour, said they will produce their materials for the iPad when it comes, but not forgetting to stress that not all of their material will be getting the same treatment because of the firefight between Apple and Adobe on the matter of the future of the Flash plug-in technology. Reading what the New York Times found out about the matter, Condé should have material ready for Apple’s latest lovechild by April, rolling out GQ on the device, followed by Vanity Fair and Wired in June and The New Yorker and Glamour sometime in the summer. NYT went on to say that the group will be trying out a number of different prices, advertising methods and ways to reproduce the content for the iPad as they conduct a little experiment with it. Condé Nast has their material on the iPhone already (which is good by the way), but the company demoed a version of Wired for the iPad that was extremely interactive. After showing the demo, they did, however, inform the press that not every one of their publication will receive the same treatment like they did with the wonderful Wired Magazine piece, due to the fact that Apple and Adobe are kinda in hot water with the whole Flash debate that has gotten everyone wondering “Where is Flash going to end up?” MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka did a follow up on the company, stating that

“Conde is still creating a digital version of its tech magazine for the device, but the influential publisher says it wont create similar iPad apps for other titles unless Apple and Adobe figure out how to work together.”

Chief Executive of Condé Nast Charles Townsend said that the highly interactive Wired Magazine application demoed was originally a product of Adobe and their technology in Flash. Apple’s latest spawn does not support Flash, because of this, the publisher would have to create “two parallel development tracks”, according to the information that MediaMemo received.

Chuck was later asked if Apple and Adobe could somehow cook up a way to bring Flash support to the iPad, would there be consideration to embrace to format on the iPad. He replied that it would be “an easy yes”

Mentioned earlier, Condé Nast has their content already accessible on the iPhone and iPod touch. GQ, for example, is available on the iPhone OS, but, Charlie explained that the magazine on the iPhone is pretty much a transition from it’s print form to the digital world and doesn’t display all the bells and whistles that Adobe provided for the Wired iPad app.

If some of you out there are saying to yourselves “Since when were Apple and Adobe trading blows?”, it’s actually been for a little while now. With the introduction of HTML5, the new standard presented the ability to play complex content (such as embedded videos and animated websites) right from the browser, eliminating the need for the Adobe Flash plug-in while providing, what experts say, a far more easy and stable experience. The iGod himself, Steve Jobs, was proclaimed being cited stating that the Flash technology was a “CPU hog” and that it is “old technology.” Another report publicized says that Jobs “was quoted” saying that the folks over at Adobe are “lazy”. Experts, including S.J., say that the majority cause for an application crashing is because of Flash (usually conflicting code), which, by the way, has been well documented. Apple is not the only group who agree with doing away with Flash. The great folks over at Google are also with Apple in the “Fight Against Flash”. Google is recently transitioning their content to utilize the new HTML5 initiative, having beginning switching the content on YouTube solely to HTML5 (despite a few of the content). Mozilla, the people who produced probably the most widely used web browser app next to Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer with their creation of Firefox, is also planning a cease-&-desist motive in the use of Adobe’s technology by also making the new version of the Firefox web browser HTML5-standard. Despite a lot of major groups who all agree that it’s just that time for Flash, Microsoft is still a believer and probably one of the few major organizations backing Flash, and Microsoft and Adobe are a good duo. Still though, Apple, Google and Mozilla? That’s gonna be a tough lineup to beat given their influence on the industry and what HTML5 has been demonstrated its capable of.

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