[jonknee]

Try browsing for a new car or clothes. For whatever reason both of those verticals are highly dependent on Flash and as such unusable on the iPad. I would have thought luxury brands would have figured out by now that iOS demographics trend affluent and should be valued.

Update: Case in point...

http://hugoboss.com - usable mobile site, but you can't see or buy any of the clothes!

http://bananarepublic.gap.com/ - "Flash required" error message and the same goes for the other Gap brands

http://gucci.com - it's just a black screen

http://dior.com - "Flash required" error

Etc etc, it's nutty. Car sites are a little better and usually break in more subtle ways (videos that don't work is common). Cadillac actually has a nice iPad optimized site, so kudos there.

http://mazdausa.com - redirected to a really low-fi mobile version with much less information. A step up from WAP, not much.

http://bmwusa.com - same as Mazda, a really horrible mobile site that is a column about 200px wide

http://www.miniusa.com/ - "Flash required" error page

[silvestrov]

It seems like those sites are exactly the kind of products I prefer to look at In Real Life, and not just as pictures on a computer.

Due to broken bones which forces me to stay at home, I've bought clothes online and it has resulted in a significant number of unpleasant surprises which are trivial to avoid in a physical shop. My (Danish) experience is that the shops that provide the most useful information are the shops that avoid Flash and uses plain html pages (e.g. Amazon, smartguy.dk).

Flash-based sites almost always makes it impossible to add "I probably want to buy this" bookmarks in the browser, so a lot of items don't get bought by me. So even when the browser supports Flash, the site starts out with a significant handicap (looking at you, H&M) ... and I don't have the patience for the transition animations that most Flash developers think is a must-have.

[jonknee]

I typically browse online before making it to the store. If I see Hugo Boss has a nice looking new collection and I need a new suit I can then drop by the store. Maybe it's just that I don't like shopping, but I always do my research first.

Also, looking at my outfit today it was entirely bought online except for my socks and underwear. No broken bones either, I just find it convenient for clothes that don't need tailored.

[bonzoesc]

Not sure what kind of grocery-getter you were looking at, but the Audi USA site let me ogle and price hot an R8 on my iPad just fine.

[jonknee]

Audi USA's site is broken in Mobile Safari--the menu bar stays in position when you move the page which covers up text. Looking at the desktop version it appears they always want it to be on the bottom of the page, but Mobile Safari behaves differently enough for that to break.

Oh and did you check out the R8's photos and video page? Flash required error. You can't even see a photo gallery of the car.