For that reason I think it’s important to throw Cocoa in the mix. Flex is written in ActionScript, YUI in JavaScript, and Cocoa in Objective-C. They are all building blocks on top of a runtime.

So the question becomes which is the best tool to reach my target user base. To me it is useless to pit technologies against each other unless you have a context for use.

For games, I would probably not choose Cocoa. If I wanted the game to live on consoles, apple idevices and pcs, I would choose unity3d or torque because their building blocks make it easy to build games for all of those platforms at once.

When would i choose flash? For applications and games that I want to run on the Internet, social networks, and desktop pc/mac, and eventually non idevices mobile devices..

When would I use html5? For websites and software meant to run in websites.

As a developer I want tool and technology freedom to choose the best fit for the user. Let’s be honest, how many apps do we use in the safari browser? The iPhone/iPad is all about the AppStore and native apps.

IMO, This is an issue of developer loyalty. As Steve stated Apple doesn’t want the meta framework standing between them and their developers because, as the console wars taught us, Games in exclusive agreements sell consoles. Unfortunately, Apple sells a lot of games built on meta frameworks like unity3d. It will be interesting to see how long Apple is able to play favorites.

Sorry to chop your post down to something that probably doesn’t begin to cover everything, I’m just trying to simplify so I can understand better.

If this summation is accurate though, wouldn’t the real differences between Flash and HTML5 be 1) maturity, 2) browser coding to meet standards, and 3) specialization?

Seems like #1 would be addressed over time and #2 would, ideally, be a non-issue once the spec is finalized and browsers are coded to meet the standard fully (I know, probably wishful thinking on this one). That would leave #3, which would seem to be only a matter of determination. As in, “I’m going to write hundreds of extra lines of code/spend lots of extra time on this just to make it pure HTML.” Sure, I don’t see many corporations going that route, as it doesn’t make financial sense when there’s a cheaper, quicker option available. But I can certainly imagine folks who can spare the time and are absolutely consumed with the need for their content to show up in every browser, Flash or no Flash.

Thanks for taking the time to respond Ryan, I really appreciate it – and all of you guys at Soma!

I believe corporate environments find a solution like this necessary for a number of  different reasons:

1. Limited Development resources and a significant need for custom software.  Development needs to deliver from a single code base on a mature rapid application development platform.

2. Limited Quality Assurance/Testing resources.  Forcing customers to one platform means regression testing once rather than for each browser supported.

3. HTML/Javascript Libraries are numerous and range in maturity, active community support, and are subject to evolving browser features and versions.  Frameworks and SDKs come and go.  To limit the risk of choosing a fly by night Software Development Kit.  Limiting support to a single browser means it is easier to create a home grown set of software building blocks that don’t have to be updated for browsers.

4. Browser HTML standards historically have a poor track record of standards compliance among browsers.  And extremely slow adoption (4+ years).  I think that is part of the reason we are seeing a very slow death of Internet Explorer.

This is where Flash comes in.  It is a mature Software Development Kit (4+ years) which has support by one of the largest Software companies in the world.  It has mature Integrated Development Environment tools which are essential for developer productivity.  It has a Mature Integrated Runtime (13+ years) that runs on 98% of internet connected pcs (including windows, os x and linux)

HTML5 is not a Software Development Kit it’s not a rapid application development platform.  It is a specification for a document format, a specification for style sheets which dictate how the elements of the document look, specifications for apis to data storage, drawing apis and object models so that scripts can access individual document elements.

Code must be written in the browser to make all this fanciness work on the browser, and code must be written by web developers against this standard to create mature software development kits that have all the hacks necessary to work on as many browsers as possible.  And believe me, browsers are not immune to defects.  Far from it.

I’m not entirely sold on HTML5 yet, so please don’t think that I’ve made up my mind about this already. But your arguments for Flash seem to be, essentially, that it simplifies the development process and allows a very broad audience to have access to your work – which wouldn’t necessarily be the case if you were coding for a specific OS. Is that an accurate summation? It would seem to me that, aside from learning the new bits and pieces of HTML that version 5 brings to the table, HTML5 does exactly that, doesn’t it?

So I guess my real question is, what other benefits does Flash provide that HTML5, even in it’s finalized spec, cannot?