Is the iPad *really* the future of the web? Some people seem to be eating up the hype, and hanging onto every statement that Apple makes, but I'm not convinced. There are a lot of features of the iPad that leave me scratching my head, but in this post I want to talk about the lack of plug-in support.
Plugins are an integral part of the web experience... Ignoring that fact could be a mistake. I'm not just talking about Flash; there are a lot more plugins out there than just Flash.
Gaming
Think about online gaming: Quake Live is it's own plugin (yes, there is a mac version too), there are those Flash and Silverlight casual games all over the web (which are quite popular on netbooks), the Unity 3D plugin games, oh, and JAVA Applet based games too... none of them will work. If this device is to take on Netbooks, it must compete in this area.
HTML5
Even if the HTML5 standard ever really becomes a standard, the development tools will are not caught up, and each application implementation will need to be tweaked for each browser variant of HTML5. There are no graphical IDEs like Flash or Blend for HTML5 to create expressive and visual applications. It will be more difficult to make content targeted to run without a player based solution.
RIA
RIAs are being built every day leveraging both Flash and Silverlight for complex solutions and data visualizations, and many of them contain features that you simply cannot do in HTML alone (even with HTML5). I don't see enterprises wanting to re-invest into the applications that they have already built, just b/c the iPad does not support them. Instead, I suspect that they will turn to another hardware solution.
This doesn't mean that I don't believe that the iPad has a future. I have no doubt that it will have an influential role in mobile computing. A lot of effort and resources went into building it, and decisions were made that we are not privy to. I simply disagree with the fact that this is the future of the web. Perhaps it is not even meant to take on netbooks, or be used in the enterprise.
Does this mean that I will never write software for the iPad? ...Absolutely not. I'm already looking into it, and it offers an interesting paradigm. Does this mean that I will never use an iPad? Nope, not that either. All I'm saying is that I'm not sure it is {the future of the web}.
These are my thoughts, and I'm sure there are many out there that may disagree. Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments below.