now, given the overwhelming elasticity of the parties involved, I think a good joke would be a windows mobile edition “platform-built” to a “jailbroken” iPad…

Clearly, folks that own the iPhone have not missed Flash so much that they would not purchase. Early iPhone purchasers could compare their phones to other phones on the market and clearly see how much better their iPhones where. No phones had Flash (bad on Adobe), so no one could really complain that Apple didn’t have it.

However, the iPad is a different story. I think many folks migrating to the iPad will be doing so to replace laptops. The most compelling application on the iPad is the browser. The iPad’s beautiful screen, magazine-like form factory and natural touch input is fantastic – you really want to use this as your exclusive browser. However, many of the websites that you like so much are crippled on the iPad. This will be very disappointing to iPad owners. No matter Steve’s opinion on the technology, people like and use Flash technology every day. Some even depend on it. Steve is a very brilliant guy, but even he can’t pretend that he know’s what’s best for these folks – they know what they want. Steve isn’t doing what is best for users, he is doing what is best for Apple and it’s immediate ecosystem.

I think Apple believes, or at least hopes, that this will push website developers to adopt HTML5 features to replace Flash content. I have to say, HTML5 just isn’t ready. I tried using it – it’s not good. Performance varies widely across browsers, so much so that you can’t rely on it even in some browsers that claim to support it. The actual api’s differ in detail across browsers as well. IE doesn’t support it in anyway. Safari’s support is excellent, but it is only a small percentage of installed browsers. Go try all the cool demos on the top browsers, including IE, and you will see what I mean. HTML5 not yet a viable alternative for developing content across platforms.

I think Apple knows that and is ok with it. To believe that Flash is inferior to HTML5 is stupid. Steve is definitely NOT stupid. HTML5 is not yet a viable platform, so why would Steve say developers should use it rather than Flash? Because you will quickly learn that you can’t use it instead of Flash if your goal is to create content that can play on multiple platforms. Ultimately, you will come to the inevitable conclusion that you must use ObjectiveC (or C or C++) to develop for iPhone/iPad. This is good for Apple, because it creates developer lock-in. It makes it hard to monetize your content on other platforms. Monitizing other platforms is not something that is good for Apple, so why should they support it? That makes sense; just be honest about it.

I mean, did you read the change to the developer agreement, “Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited”. You can’t use ‘translation’ tools. What the F is C, C++ or ObjectiveC!? Guess what, GCC uses the LLVM to produce native code for the iPhone and iPad. SO DOES ADOBE’S PACKAGER FOR IPHONE. It’s the SAME technology – the same translator!

It’s not about whether Flash is good or bad. It’s about what is good for Apple. Apple certainly has the right to decide what that is. I am not complaining about their decision – it is a good decision for Apple. It’s the bad mouthing Flash that I find very disturbing because it is not true and it can have very negative consequences for 3rd parties. Perhaps Adobe brought this on themselves by making the Mac take a backseat to Windows. Certainly, this doesn’t make it any harder for Apple (Steve) to make the decision to lock-out Flash. It probably makes it more satisfying.