Webcams? No, HTML5 will probably have support for that. "Advanced audio stuff"?! What do you mean? JavaScript (with HTML5) is a full programming language totally capable of "advanced audio stuff", whatever that means.

What do you mean Flash has DRM but HTML5 doesn't? And yes, I do consider DRM a bad thing.

Edit: Source for webcam comment: http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Native-webcam-suppor...

The audio capabilities of HTML5 suck. They're not going to get better for a while, and in the time it takes them to catch up, Flash will have continued to build on their well established foundations.

Okay, looking at HTML5 drum machines via Google. Here. Here's an one, http://www.randomthink.net/labs/html5drums/ - it's got all the basic trimmings, but the playback has tempo fluctuations, and the whole thing is slow. And this is a drum machine running all by itself. Compare that to audiotool.com, and tell me that HTML5 can do what AudioTool does.

Here's another one - http://pattern86.com/sequencer-in-html5/ - also laggy, and it only consists of four channels.

Keep in mind, I'm not trashing the efforts of the folks who made these, kudos to them! But compare that to something like this http://audiotool.com/app/dubtexno/1 -- HTML5 cannot do that. Sure, it will be able to in a few years. And surely, Flash will be able to do new things in a few years, too.

This doesn't even address the lack of a (for want of a better term) unified developing environment for HTML/JS/Canvas/Audio a la Flash CSwhatever.

What on earth are you talking about? You're comparing HTML5 today to Flash with their maturity? I would bloody well hope Flash is still faster.

The reason HTML5 is the future is it doesn't have the Adobe bottleneck. Is sound bad right now? Then browser makers can fix it. Is Flash a CPU hog? Wait until Adobe cares enough and has enough resources to fix it. Get it?

But HTML 5 is being touted as a drop-in Flash replacement today. And it's clearly not.

I don't think anyone is saying that. I think people are saying it's a better idea to invest in HTML5 today. And with that I would absolutely agree. Flash has jumped the shark.

I don't think it's fair to compare Flash 10.1 to a future revision of HTML5, because by that time Flash 11 will probably have more features that HTML5 doesn't.

"Media protected using the upcoming Adobe Flash Access 2.0 SDK can be played back securely in Flash Player 10.1 to support a wide range of business models, including video-on-demand, rental, and electronic sell-through, for streaming as well as download." http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/838/cpsid_83808.html (There's also RTMPE and SWF verification, but AFAIK those have already been broken.)

How do you synthesize/analyze audio on the waveform level with HTML5? AFAIK this is only possible with an alpha version of Firefox implementing an experimental API, not part of HTML5. Flash can do full waveform synthesis as of v10, audiotool wouldn't work without it. The only way I can imagine doing this is creating data: URI's for <audio> in Javascript containing raw OGG/WAV data, which is write-only, half-baked and seems impractical.