Ooh, even more reason to push for the invalidation of all software patents. Nothing like using them as ammunition for the cause of suppressing innovation.

I don't know if HTML5 is the future or not, but flash is definitely the present, and excluding it makes for a handicapped product.

Simple solution though: JAILBREAK

Umm... as long as flash isn't properly OS tailored jailbreak is useless and internet videos & content are a pain to enjoy.

FWIW, here's a funny thing:

Replacing "Adobe" with "Apple" and "Flash" with "closed" gives some nice paragraphs:

Before:
After:

When it comes to Flash, I have no problem putting my troll hat on.

If I could disagree more with you, I would. My Flash plugin is always disabled, and the very rare occasions that it isn't, I want to throw my n900 off the balcony. And I live on the 12th floor. Anger management issues? Maybe. But Flash is what makes my n900 a handicapped product, not the other way around.

Speed doesn't kill, Flash kills speed. More importantly though, Flash kills

Innovation, Security and Battery

Steve Jobs, like a broken clock...

Interesting take on flash, iPhone dev vs web standards by the guy who designed the (very well received) iphone Facebook app:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/joe...b-development/

HTML5 is curently more demanding than flash if we're talking streaming.
I love flash on N900 and if it hasn't for full flash I'd probably wait for N8.

I do use some flash blocker though that allows me to choose the flash content I want [flash content, click to play]. Highly efficient

Thanks for that interesting read ysss but I couldn't help noticing how much he defended IE, came across as rubbing the bosses back. Now, I'm the last person to shout out " corporate conspiracy" but why did the author try and throw people off with this:

yet fail to mention that Microsoft is in effect his new boss.

Microsoft in a conspiracy? Pshawww.. You must be kidding, right.

But yeah, I agree. Although the guy is supposedly a pretty stout idealist that he left iPhone app development due to disagreement against apple's AppStore tactics.

The problem with this argument (performance hog) is that it won't get any better if we kill Flash and adopt the distant future promised by HTML5. Don't you think that the same ads and same crappy developers won't use HTML5 instead of Flash once it becomes more wide-spread? And the things would only get worse in that case given that FVM2 runs circles around any JS interpreter out there (which is why Mozilla themselves are adopting Adobe's FVM2 (Tamarin) to be their JS/AS interpreter), while Flash Player still eats way less resources for vector animation than any Canvas/SVG solution out there.

If anything, if Flash would to disappear right now, the web would really become painful as its much easier to block a complete plugin than block a subset of JS/DOM features on a global scale.

As for the Jobsy's hypocritical BS about openness, I think I couldn't explain what Flash is and what Flash isn't than I did HERE. In a nutshell, Flash platform is open, a major portion of Flash implementations from Adobe are open-sourced (compilers, linkers, builders, virtual machine), and nobody stops anyone to write a better performing plugin/player than Adobe's own (given that they open-sourced the VM your job is 80% done). However, Flash is not a standard and given the shear market penetration of Adobe Flash Player and quality and complexity of authoring tools that Adobe provides, Adobe is de-facto in control of what will happen with the Flash platform for years to come.

Choosing a side in this debate touted as `pot, meet kettle` is pretty much pointless, and usually comes from an emotional rather than a rational reasons mainly because vast majority of people have no idea what they are talking about and usually repeat words of some CEO or PR manager of their beloved company. Now, how could anyone love a company and think that their shareholders are philanthropists interested in wasting their money for the good of the mankind is beyond my comprehension, but that really seems to be the case when people slide with Adobe or Apple here.

With all being said, Adobe at least tries to be friendly and not that much malevolent as large companies usually are, Apple has quite an opposite strategy. Given that I'm a developer, it's only natural to have more respect for Adobe than for Apple, but really choosing a side would be quite foolish thing to do. What I will defend, however, is the Flash platform - it's a good, mature platform for single-binary cross-platform and web deployment, it offers far more things that are even mentioned in the HTML5 draft, and it would be a terrible loss for the interwebs to get rid of it. I don't care what company is behind it at present time, or what company is attacking it with false arguments (and, yes, there are valid arguments against the Flash platform, but no Apple CEO/PR/fanboi was able to produce them 'til this day).