I agree that in the short term, not having Flash will wall off large sections of web content.<p>However, if the iPad takes off we will have to either provide alternate content or abandon flash on our heaviest flash sites.  The web design company I work for will probably switch to standards-based Javascript animation and HTML5 video with the usual fallbacks for IE6.  We already use JS for many things that used to be flash, like menus, slideshows, galleries, and animations.<p>When it was just the iPhone/iPod touch, with their relatively small browsing traffic, it was easy to shrug it off when a site didn't work properly.  Expectations will be different with this device.  My clients will be asking why their site is broken on their iPads.<p>The big video sites will implement an HTML5-powered player for the iPad because it allows them to go around the iTunes / App store model.  Smaller video players will probably make the switch sooner.<p>Apple may be doing the developer community a favor by giving us a reason to leave flash behind.  The runtime is fine on Windows but sluggish on OSX and slow and buggy on Linux; it's frequently using more CPU time than anything else on my system and often has terrible video playback performance.