Flash
Apple seems determined to leave Adobe's Flash runtime behind in its newer offerings, deriding it as buggy and the culprit behind most of the crashes on Apple's desktop machines. When the iPhone came out with Flash conspicuously absent, people wondered how Internet users would get by without it. Well, the biggest hurdle was crossed once YouTube started making videos available to non-Flash browsers; rumor has it that Hulu is planning to follow suit. And now Apple has teamed up with Google to promote the HTML 5 standard, which will allow video to be embedded without relying on a vendor offering like Flash. If the iPad can prove to users that the Web works fine without Flash, that could be devastating for Adobe.
Java
Apple isn't just hostile towards Flash as such; the company is determined to keep all languages that run in a separate runtime off of its iPhone OS devices. That includes Java, the increasingly long in the tooth language recently acquired along with Sun by Oracle. There's a huge developer base for Java, and it's an extremely important language for server-side development -- but the hopes that it would really run anywhere, expressed in part with the existence of the Java ME platform, have never really panned out. Java developers went into a bit of a tizzy as it became clear that Java would never be allowed onto the iPhone; now that the iPad has came along, they seem to have reached a point of sullen acceptance. Developers can always leverage their Java skills by using code converters like XMLVM to turn Java into Objective C, but it seems unlikely that new developers looking to get into iPad development will go down this path.
AT&T's Network
AT&T has always been the weak link in Apple's U.S. iPhone juggernaut, with spotty service enraging users who expect to take full advantage of their phones' data capabilities. But AT&T does have one big advantage: its network is compatible with the GSM standard used worldwide, leaving Apple with the choice of either manufacturing a U.S.-only device for Verizon's network or sticking with the devil they know. Many thought Apple would go the former route for the iPad, but instead it too is an AT&T-only device. It's something of a coup for the wireless company -- though users won't be tied into a lucrative two-year contract as they will be with the iPhone. AT&T is beefing up its network in preparation -- but if the iPad is popular enough and data demand once again defeats AT&T's capabilities, then the company's reputation could be fatally shot.
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