The move from Adobe Flash to HTML5 is one of those slow moving beasts. It'll happen in the fullness of time (or something better than either will slip into the gap), but there's life in the old dog yet and after a few days of rumours, the Adobe blog has confirmed that upcoming Windows 8 tablets will support Flash in the traditional desktop mode.
With the new Metro interface, on the other hand, things get a little more tricky. The optional UI will not support plug-ins which means apps running in Metro will be built using Adobe AIR software instead – currently used for flash-like apps on iOS, BlackBerry and Android operating systems.
But it won't be long before tablets – and we suspect particularly Windows 8 tablets – won't be restrictive about what software they can and can't run.
Samsung's PC Slate arrived rocking an Intel Core i5 and the first batch of Windows tablets should turn up wearing Nvidia's Tegra 3 (Kal-El) quad-core system on a chip under their armour. PC software will adapt to touchscreens. Apple and Google's app stores may suddenly find themselves with something to think about.