One of the features missing in iOS is for sure Adobe Flash support. iPad, which in theory is designed mainly as a highly portable web browsing/mail reading device, is not able to view all websites on the internet. Adobe Flash is a de facto standard, it is available for a multitude of platforms, including Linux and Android. Apple however, decided against including Flash in iOS. Apple claims, that the reasoning behind this is purely technical related. Most of the mobile device community, however, suspects that real reasons are business ones: introducing Flash and enabling users to access free web games could severely impact AppStore revenues. Steve Jobs mentioned during his keynote, that developers have earned 2 billion dollars from AppStore sales. That obviously means nearly a billion dollar cut for Apple itself.
Adobe has announced new streaming features
Adobe did not surrender, and some Flash features are still coming to iOS platform. Thanks to HTTP Live Streaming, or HLS in short, it will be possible for the server to decide what kind of stream player to use – either a classic flash player or HTML 5 based one. Unfortunately that means Flash games and websites will still remain out of reach for iPad and iPhone users, but they will be able to access more video related websites.