Virgin America cuts flash from website, but keeps it at their Kiosks

You want to know a CTO that gets it? Someone who realizes that technology shouldn’t be about drawing a line in the sand between one architecture and another? Just look at Virgin America’s CTO, Ravi Simhambhatla. Simhambhatla had this to say to the Register:

I don’t want to cater to one hardware or one software platform one way to another, and Flash eliminates iPhone users. This year is going to be the year of the mobile [for Virgin].

These comments come on the back of the news that Virgin has decided to get Flash off of their website so that iPhone and other mobile users can still access it.  His comments make a ton of sense.

Finally, someone can see passed the crap that’s been clouding the waters of this debate. If a user doesn’t have Flash access, the site shouldn’t be serving up Flash content. It a browser does have flash access, then the site can serve up Flash. Give users what they need, and stop trying to force them to meet your needs. Virgin Mobile clearly gets it.

Taking there website and making sure that all users can access there content is the smartest thing they could have done. You can reach 100% of a market with HTML and Javascript, but you certainly can’t reach the Apple user who with an iPhone with Flash. As a business person what would you prefer, a website that everyone can see, or a website that cuts out part of your market? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Via Apple Insider

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.