Update: John Nack of Adobe posts on his blog, strongly refuting the claim.

Since Steve Jobs demoed the iPad, showing quite blatantly that it didn’t support Flash, the backlash has been severe. Lots of (frankly stupid) journos have blathered on about how no Flash spells doom for Apple’s device, forgetting that people don’t care about technology—they just care about what you can do with it. In other words, Flash isn’t important, but the things you can do with it are. Flash is mostly used for games, ads, video and overblown interactive websites. Right now, popular Flash-originated games already exist on the App Store (often for free), everyone hates ads, video services are transitioning to open standards and overblown interfaces can go die in a fire.

But despite what some claim, Apple’s rather brutal stance as far as the web goes isn’t to block competition, but to push open standards, rather than proprietary ones. People forget that Flash isn’t open—it’s just very popular. Somehow, even many geeks are OK with this, despite the fact they rallied against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for being in much the same position fairly recently.

Perhaps the difference in reaction to Microsoft and Adobe was down to the former’s appalling business practices, using its ‘unfair’ advantage to bully the competition into submission. Sadly, it appears Adobe’s now overstepped this mark. Various sources reported yesterday that Adobe has blocked the latest publication of HTML5 (AppleInsider), the standard that could knock Flash down a peg or 20.

This revelation comes off the back of months of regular comments from Adobe about the importance of supporting open standards. Nonetheless, if there’s any truth to the linked article (and similar ones doing the rounds) it appears Adobe’s narked about the ‘canvas’ element in HTML5, which is a direct threat to Flash. What Adobe should do is start work on some amazing authoring tools to create content for HTML5, rather than trying to slow its ascent and keep Flash in the spotlight for longer. As Microsoft will tell you, a company can only hold back the tide for so long, and the tech community holds grudges for many years.

Following Warner Music’s announcement that it is to stop licensing its songs to free online music streaming services, stating that such things are “clearly not positive for the industry”, the record label is to also stop releasing music digitally and on CD. From tomorrow, all new Warner output will be exclusively on vinyl, with the average album costing around $50 (£32).

“Digital music and CDs are too easy to pirate,” said a Warner spokesperson. “Filthy f——ing pirate scum copying Warner albums results less income for our executives… uh, I mean artists, and so we’ve taken this step to ensure we… uh, I mean our artists get more income and can continue making wonderful music.” On the decision to go vinyl, the spokesperson remarked that “no modern PC has a vinyl slot” and that the company would soon release the iVinylPod, a device enabling you to play your Warner albums on the go. “The iVinylPod is slightly larger than the average mobile music player,” confirmed the spokesperson, adding: “But we think the music-buying public will happily forego a little convenience when they know record label executives are making money hand over fist. Uh, I mean when they know artists are getting more income from their wonderful music.”

Warner refused to comment on leaked information that its vinyl albums will also be removed from sale this summer, replaced by iWarner. According to documentation now circling the internet, the iWarner service removes media from the equation entirely. Instead, your selected artist comes to your house and plays their latest album live in your front room. To remove the threat of piracy, Warner detonates a small electromagnetic pulse bomb to destroy all recording equipment in your neighbourhood, and the suggested price per album of $1 million is, according to marketing blurb, countered by the “wonderful immersive experience that only iWarner can bring”.

Answer: unrealistic expectations followed by inevitable disappointment.

In the meantime, feel free to re-read How to update your online store, the Apple way.

Over the past 24 hours, lots of publications have reported on a stupid Vodafone employee posting an inappropriate and homophobic message to the company’s Twitter feed.

Perhaps surprisingly, the media didn’t erupt in a frenzy of “social networking is evil” rants, although, inevitably, a number of individuals are claiming they’ll cancel their Vodafone accounts, due to the incident.

Personally, I think such people are idiots. Yes, the comment posted was unsavoury, but I tend to think you find out a lot about a company by how it deals with problems such as this. Vodafone could so easily have established a PR smokescreen, or it could have lied and claimed its feed was hacked. Instead, it told the truth. It said one of its staff (now suspended) had posted the message, and it replied and publicly apologised on Twitter to everyone asking about what had happened.

I don’t have any day-to-day dealings with Vodafone, and so I cannot comment on the quality and standards of the company in general. However, in the manner in which this incident was dealt with, I don’t really see how anyone could have asked for anything more, perhaps bar Vodafone management taking a little more interest in exactly who has access to the (usually very helpful) Twitter feed.

Adam Banks on Flash:

Flash is a technology that emerged from 1990s multimedia and appeals to developers, especially developers who aren’t really developers and are hoping they can get away with it.

I’m going to be smiling for the rest of the day now.