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Time Warner, Universal push back at iPad

The media giants say they won't spend the time and money to rework their Flash-friendly video libraries to make them compatible with the iPad, according to a news report.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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Edward Moyer
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Time Warner and NBC Universal have told Apple they won't spend the time and money to rework their Flash-friendly video libraries to make them compatible with the iPad, according to a news report.

The New York Post reported the rebuff Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

Apple's iPad has roared off shelves in the United States since its U.S. introduction in April, giving the iPod, iTunes, and iPhone creator an ever stronger position in the entertainment and computing industry and helping it move past one-time nemesis Microsoft in market value.

But some say the power has gone to the company's head, and they point to Apple's tussle with Adobe Systems over Adobe's Flash software as but one indication that Apple is drunk on its escalating influence.

The iPad doesn't support Flash, an all-but-omnipresent application for creating and viewing Web-based animation and video. Apple says the software is proprietary, outdated, insecure, and unstable. Adobe, on the other hand, has subtly implied that Apple may be becoming a corporate control freak.

So could Apple's fortunes be in for a shift? Consider these factors: the stubbornness on the part of Time Warner and Universal; Google's Android operating system for phones, tablets, and other such devices; a burgeoning stable of tablets from other companies; hints of a media and tech-geek backlash; stirrings from the U.S. Department of Justice; and even concern over greasy fingerprints on touch-screen displays.

Then again, as the Post notes, other major media entities including Disney, CBS (parent company of CNET), CNN, and Fox News offer at least some iPad-compatible content--and with the iPad now big in Japan (and elsewhere overseas), they may have little choice but to offer more.