VP8 Open-sourced and Adopted by Adobe

As expected, Google open-sourced the VP8 codec today. This means that there is now a patent-unemcumbered codec available to those concerned with using H.264 and Ogg Theora. Adobe agreed to support VP8 in Flash and in other content-creation tools.

Google's tablet will definitely use this codec.

Some uncertainties:

• Will YouTube videos be re-encoded in VP8 to the exclusion of H.264?
• What happens to future versions of the iPad (it currently decodes H.264 in hardware)?
  
• Will the next version of the iPad still support H.264?
  
• Will the iPad support decoding VP8 in software, thus affecting battery life?
  

(Lack of) Flash on the iPad

The iPad was available for sale on April 3, 2010 and Flash sites didn't work in the Safari browser. There was a lot of complaining.

A few days later, Apple went so far as to change the developer licensing agreement and ban Apps not written in authorized programming languages so that applications written in Flash and then cross-compiled to run on the iPhone. There was even more complaining.

There was so much speculation as to why Flash was banned, that Apple released a public statement on the matter.

On May 7th, there was a non-demo of a beta mobile Flash on the Nexus One; there is still no mobile Flash solution available a full month after the iPad has shipped.

Apple's decision is vindicated.

An aside on demos: many years ago, as a software developer, we did monthly demos to a client as proof that milestones were being achieved as stipulated by the contract. Several lessons were learned from these demos as enumerated below:

1. only demo features that work (the current (and any past) milestones)
2. practice the demo before hand and perform it exactly as practiced (your demo will otherwise very likely fail)
   
3. the person doing the demo controls the demo (don't let the client touch the mouse)