This makes perfectly sense to me, much more than the post in dev/why? linked by Bruno.

Not being a developer, maybe I lack the specific knowledge to fully understand what the post at dev/why? says. But, if it is hard to maintain binary compatibility with flash layer - which, correct me if I am wrong, can itself be considered native - and consequently with all applications running on that layer, why would it be less difficult to maintain compatibility with hundred other native applications out there? What am I not understanding, or do I not know?

So far, if I get it right, it really seems to me that this is the same old strategic game of trying to make your proprietary technology a de-facto standard; strategy which is significantly compromised by any intermediary layer that allows an app to be developed for more than one OS and more than one hardware platform.

If you have a majority of apps dependent on a third-party framework then Apple is no longer free to update/innovate without consulting and likely being slowed down by that third party. It also means that Apple would have to work closer with that third party.

On the desktop, Apple doesn't really give a damn about an update breaking flash in your browser. But they do have to do a lot of regression testing against a lot of popular software. The argument is that perhaps they'd like this process streamlined on the iPhone.

It's sensible, but I still think it's more about not letting the platform become the commodity as both Mark and I have said before.

Somebody emailed Steve Jobs and asked whether iPhoneOS 4 would be coming out for the original iPhone and the answer was no.

Ok, so you too agree that there's no technical reason why Apple should worry about backwards compatibility with Adobe more than with any other native app producer.

As a matter of fact, it seems to me that one (I) may then argue that having to deal with more then one actor at every upgrade to make sure that all software already in the market works, is probably harder and less convenient than having to deal with ONE actor to gain compatibility with a number of applications.
So, Flash is really not providing backward compatibility issues here more than any other native product is.

Which is why



I too tend to agree on this.

Moreover, this is strategically (maybe not ethically) the right time to play the power game agains Adobe and others. iPhone is actually a big success NOW, regardless of Adobe and any other intermediate software layer producer, and iPad is reinforcing the platform market success; in a power game between Apple and Adobe (or any other), Apple definitely seems to me the prevailing one. My guess is that Apple wants to use its current market power (entirely independent from Adobe) to get rid of Flash and similar products now. Should they fail, they can alwways step back and eventually allow Flash and similar. But it is really a "now or never" situation.

I'll leave ethical considerations aside.

As a consumer, instead, I find this whole thing academically interesting - from a market analysis point of view - but I am not happy. Similarly, referring to Bitt's and Bruno's comment on Flash technology, I may agree that it's not technically / conceptually the best out there, and, in that respect, I may be ok that Apple's move may favour its extinction, hopefully, but not necessarily, in favor of some better one; still, I am not happy.
The reason being that today there are websites out there which rely largely on flash, and whether Bruno (just an example ) or Jane Smith or anyone else decide not to visit them is completely irrelevant to me: I may wanto or need to visit them, and I can't with the iPhone. So should I be looking for some handheld browsing experience, iPhone may not be the way to go for me.

All in all, this power game is not beneficial to me in the short run, and in the long run it's not going to necessarily be a good thing.

I am now just hoping that Windows Phone 7 includes/allows flash. I am sure Microsoft is watching this whole story with great interest, and I think that if Apple persists in moving against Adobe, MS will try a different strategy and allow flash and similar on their platform.
After all, Zune gave me a much better experience than iPod (even though I never even tried Zune HD), and it could very well be the same with Win Phone 7.

Will see...

No Flash on WIndows Phone 7.

If you want to see content on a site that uses Flash, write to the site's owners and/or developers to let them know that you're unhappy that you can't see their content. Many sites are already "getting it" and are starting to move to standards-based designs.

To be fair, it's not going to ship initially, but Adobe and Microsoft both have said they are working to make it happen. Of course as Bruno has already pointed out, no mobile platform has Flash today anyhow, just Flash lite and such.

One undiscussed thing that is in 4.0 that has me excited is IPv6. Hopefully this means that 4.0 will also bring in proper Back to my Mac support for the iPad. Would be nice to be able to access my home desktop from anywhere just like I can currently off a Mac laptop.

Oh, boy... Rumors are that Adobe is going to sue Apple. Just over what remains unclear.

It would be amusing to see Apple drag this one out until Adobe executives are forced to sell lemonade on the streets to make cash to pay their lawyers.

Maybe Apple will just buy them out and kill Flash once and for all. Stranger things have happened. It's certainly no more absurd than Adobe suing Apple - in fact it actually makes some sense and would both expand and compliment Apple's software lineup nicely.

"Very nice software lineup you have there. I particularly like the things."

What I'd love to see Apple sued over is their misappropriation of trademarks and their use of App Store approval as leverage in extortion against app developers to get them to change app names and/or company names (especially when said companies/products pre-date Apple's own marks and/or usage of marks)

Two recent ones have come to light. ContactPad and journalPad. I'd not have used a capital "P" in those names myself, but that's beside's the point. It's not like they're named iPadContact or iPadJournal.

I suppose cupertino doesn't give a shit about products like Notepad or TextPad or probably a few hundred others that predate even the earliest dreams of Apple's use of the word "pad."

Again, just more examples of the app store approval process sucking. Both the denied apps are available in the store, having been approved earlier - but their updates are getting denied based on their names. Nice.

Indeed. ...or I may use a nettop, or a laptop, or a desktop.

But that's not the point I was making, tough. One less feature in a device is one less feature, and that's the bottom line today.
Should that bring to a "better future" I may be ok with it, somehow, but even that is uncertain.

Flash is a third party program. It is not available on a full version for any system other than FUll Mac OS or WIndows installations.

Flash missing from the iPhone is a total and complete non-issue because no other handset has it either.

Flash missing from the iPad is equally a non-issue because there are no other tablet products available that compare to the iPad. No one is going to buy a nettop instead of an iPad. They're not at all comparable. It's like saying I'm going to buy a a nettop instead of a phone. A nettop is just a cheap (as in quality) notebook. People haven't been buying them instead of Mac notebooks either.

I don't see the logic of your above statement.

I'd love to have an Empeg Mark III, but the oportunity is not there. Do I stop wanting it - or does it become a "total and complete non-issue" - because no competitor in the market has any similar device either?

I read you underline that competitors don'r have Flash either. But the point we are discussing here is that iPhone could have had it, but this oportunity for consumers is missed - and more importantly, the oportunity of having similar (possibly better) technology on it -. This is a fact.
Whether or not it is for you a non-issue is subjective and I fully respect it, but remains irrelevant to those who have other needs from their portable devices and could have benefited from the "banned" technology.

*massive edit*
Forget it, I'm not getting back into this crap.

I love my netbook, and they have nothing to do with the argument you were making, you just called them out for no reason, Bruno. Although, I can't say I'm surprised that you were parroting Steve Jobs.

ps- the correct term is netbook. nettops are different.

A nettop is a small form factor desktop PC (Dell Zino, e.g.). A netbook is a small notebook.

And, while they're often cheap, they're not all low quality. I bought a netbook instead of a Mac notebook, because it does everything I need it to, and it's cheaper, and the quality's good enough.

Some people choose not to buy Apple products. This doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with these people. Get over it.

Please be courteous enough to read the other messages in the thread before seeking out only to disagree with mine. I was replying to taym, Matt. I wouldn't otherwise have brought up nettop nor netbooks. You're right, they have nothing to do with the iPad, and that's what I was saying to taym.

BTW, why is it that I'm seeing so much selective reading here? I'm critical of Apple every week. Critical of Jobs by extension and directly just as often. Seems like those are just convenient to skip over. I don't have a hate-on for any particular brand, while I see plenty of "It's Apple therefore I'm against it" in here all the time.

With the iPad specifically I knew I didn't want one for myself but I knew the product would take off nonetheless. With regards to the features in iPhone OS 4, I knew a while back that some of the rumored features were coming. I also knew that Apple would mess something up (I've already mentioned some of the stuff that's dropped off the face of the earth from the shipping iPad OS 3.2 and beta 4.0).

There's nothing wrong with anyone for making a purchase decision. But no one is seriously weighing in on the iPad versus something else. There are no comparable products on the market. That's what some people need to get over. Stop trying to convince the world that "X" or "Y" cheap netbook is an alternative and just accept the fact that the product brings to the table a complete platform that has not previously existed and that a lot of people are legitimately interested in.

Both product classes can exist. They're not mutually exclusive. Someone in the market for a $40 steak doesn't go buy a BigMac instead. Likewise, someone seriously looking at a $500 to $800 tablet isn't in the market for a $200 netbook.

Anyway, can I get back to taym now?

The logic is that people will compare features of similar products when making purchasing decisions. No one is going to see missing Flash as a negative against the iPhone and a plus for another handset. The point is moot in that regard. We're not talking about wanting non-existing products.



But it could not have had it. The iPhone does not have any third party software pre-installed. Apple controls the whole software stack. So, unless Adobe were to open source the whole of Flash or give or sell Flash to Apple, there was no way it was ever going to be on the iPhone. So I suppose there is that slim fantasy-level chance. But I consider that a "no" because it's not at all realistic.

While some people may have considered it an "opportunity," some would have considered it a negative. Imagine wasting even more bandwidth while surfing to view mostly ads... That's what the majority of Flash content is, especially on the sites you'd want to visit with a small screened device. So there are people on both sides, keep that in mind.

The bottom line is clearly that Flash is not a deciding factor in the purchase decisions of consumers and is not holding back the sales of anyone's handset products. Look at the sales rates and numbers.



I'm not sure what this has to do with Flash. The browser on the iPhone is already one of the best, if not the best mobile browsers available and includes the same (or at least very similar) HTML5 and CSS support as the desktop version of Safari, along with a lean and fast Javascript interpreter.



But you misunderstand. My statement is completely objective. I don't care to factor in my own personal wishes into the observation. I'm looking at what the market is saying. And the market is saying that it doesn't care about Flash. The only noise about Flash is in tech blogs and techy forums. Some of it spills into mainstream media as an anecdote but nothing more. Look at all the sites transferring their content delivery away from Flash - why? Because the iPhone platform is building significant momentum and installation footprint that it matters to those sites to be able to reach that audience.



I'm not arguing that some people would not like Flash or may find use and benefits for it. I'm just saying that it has not made a difference to the product's acceptance and the platform's take-up (iPhone, iPod and now iPad).

The vast majority of people have spoken with their wallets. The iPlatform without Flash is a hit.

I said I was going to stay out of this, but I just want to add a few points. (Also, my head is no longer close to exploding. I discovered how to triple my productivity.)


They may in a few months. Until then, the knowledge that another handset may support Flash and that the iPhone definitely never will might influence people.


If a web page embeds a PDF, what happens? I've not used an iPhone enough to know personally, but I'm guessing that it opens an external application. Why would that not work for embedded Flash applets? Or is Mobile Safari so closed that it cannot deal with any objects it doesn't have preexisting knowledge of?


By any metric, the vast majority of Flash content is video. Yes, many video sites are transitioning to HTML5, but that involves a lot of transcoding of source material that's not in a codec that HTML will handle (Sorenson Spark, mostly), and YouTube, which has a dedicated application on both Android and iPhone, hasn't done that yet, to the point that a large portion of their videos (personal anecdotal evidence) won't play on those devices, even with their dedicated applications. And forget about any other video site. A few have made some minor inroads into converting to HTML5, but Hulu, for example, hasn't, and probably never will. There are not enough restrictions on how the content can be played back for them to be able to switch. And that discounts any Flash animation, which, as far as I'm aware, is completely unsupported by any mobile device. It's doubtful that many, if any, would make a smartphone choice based on whether they could watch HomestarRunner or not, but I think all would agree that would rather have the opportunity than not.


Assuming that's true, which is debatable, that means that any product that consumers aren't interested in shouldn't be allowed to reach market. Yeah, okay, maybe consumers aren't interested. If they're not, then the product would fail on its own. If they are, then Apple is restricting the market. Besides, people make uninformed decisions all the time. I'm sure that there are a variety of people out there for whom Android would work better (say, people who are drenched in the Google Kool-Aid), but they got the iPhone anyway, because it was the one that everyone else had. Bandwagonism is a strong marketing force.

Ultimately, the arguments that are being made are "iPhone plus Flash is better than iPhone without Flash". Your argument is that "iPhone without Flash is better than iPhone with Flash". I think that's demonstrably untrue. This implies that applications that would have been made via Flash will instead be made via XCode, and that a bad application is worse than no application. You can make those arguments, but they are, at the very least, debatable.


Other than Doug's semi-facetious "it's not what I'm used to, therefore it's bad" posts, this is untrue. TonyC and I are probably your most vocal adversaries, and we both use MacBookPros as our everyday workstations. Others simply state "Apple is not for me". There are people who hate on Apple, but I'm not aware of any of them here.

The problem is that you see this where it doesn't exist. I think the iPad is a stupid device, and I think that refusing to support, nay, allow, Flash is a bad choice for users, at least in the short term. Further, it sets a bad precedent for other future technologies, and marks the iPhone as a closed platform even more so than we already knew. But that doesn't mean that I hate all things Apple, and the fact that you see that where it doesn't exist is far more indicative of fanboyism than a lack of criticism. (Do you love your wife unreservedly? Do you ever disagree with her? If so, disagreement does not imply lack of obsession.)

Bitt, you're still trying to put words into my mouth and that's what I (always) have the biggest problem with.

For me personally, iPhone OS without Flash is better than with Flash. Same as Mac OS. But that's not what I'm trying to extend universally and not at all what I've been saying in this thread. I'm taking myself out of the equation and talking strictly of public acceptance of the (i)platform.

You can debate all you want, but the market has already shown that Flash does not matter. If it did, to even half the degree you seem to go on about, then the lack of Flash would be on the average consumer's tongue and it would be affecting the sales of Apple's iPhone OS based products. Those products are selling like hot-cakes to Mac users and non-Mac users alike.

I'm not here to argue. Frankly, I'm all for a good debate, but none of this is debatable. It's all moot. The fact of the matter is that Apple decides what they want on their platform. And the fact is that the market is eating it up. There's nothing to argue about there.

Remember, I'm not saying that an iPhone with Flash would do any worse in the market. Debatable is whether the iPhone would have even higher sales figures with Flash.

Now, if you want to argue the merits of Flash, that's something else entirely. Frankly, not something I'm very interested in. You might want to argue about WHY Apple doesn't have Flash, and that I've already commented on numerous times - mostly ignored with a few exceptions.

Here are some mistakes in your last post.... Hulu is coming to the iPad and iPhone with a dedicated app. Whether or not Hulu has much longevity is truly debatable. The iPad may save them, because things haven't been looking so hot for them. Also Hulu is US-only, so for many people it's irrelevant.

A lot of video served using Flash is encoded in H.264, the same codec used in the HTML5 standard video tag..

Flash video represents the majority of Flash content only on video-service sites. Everywhere else it's ads. Period. Full stop.

At the top of your post you said that "in a few months" other phones will support Flash. I normally interpret "a few" to mean 3, so we'll first see if Flash is available in full at that time on other handsets (I won't hold my breath) and then how that affects the public's buying patterns.

Here are my predictions. Flash will not be available in 3 months. When it is available, it won't be installable on many handsets, including Android sets it's supposed to be designed for. Android 2.1 (latest release, but hardly new) won't be available on some handsets until the end of the year, Windows Phone 7 which ships at the end of the year won't have Flash either. Flash performance is going to be shite on these platforms. Flash interaction is going to be crap as well and you'll see a lot of frustrated complaints. Lastly, once all these other handsets have Flash, iPhone is still going to whip them in the market. "Has Flash support" is pretty much a wasted bullet point in a commercial. Ask any of your non-techy friends what they think about Flash.

In fact, if Microsoft is smart, they won't allow Flash on Windows Phone 7 at all. At least not if they want to build out their native application list. My advice to Adobe is to start and/or continue working on standards-based tools and frameworks - CSS, SVG (hey Adobe, remember SVG?), HTML5 (et al.) and Javascript. A bunch of Flash can be run via Javascript as has been already demonstrated.

Here's another interesting read (obvious to some ppl): http://iansamuel.com/essays/progress-of-the-platform/

We've covered this before a little bit in the old "iSlate" thread (oddly I can't link to the threaded view), but as a refresher, the iPhone allows any app to register and be called by another one, including from Safari. They can register as a handler for an entire domain (IE, Apple has a Gallery app that can run when visiting http://gallery.me.com), or to handle a file type. As for your specific PDF question, they just open in the browser, since OS X is PDF based. It will also open .doc, and other MS Office formats without any 3rd party software.

Adobe could go the route of making a flash player for the phone as a standalone app, but the issue would be how web sites handle it. Since it wouldn't be installed as a plugin, websites may just display the "download flash player" button, instead of sending down the swf. I'm also not sure how Actionscript is handled, it may come afoul with the SDK agreement.


Sorenson Spark was the default in Flash 6 (2002) and 7 (2003). 8 (2005) moved to VP6 by default, and 9 update 3 (2007) moved to H.264 by default. Most of the big video sites are on Flash 9 at least.

Bitt didn't say that Hulu wouldn't come to iPhoneOS, he said that they were unlikely to be able to move to HTML5 as it makes it hard/impossible for them to restrict distribution of the content.

True enough. Harder it may be, because they'd have to come up with something new. Not however impossible. Likewise, serving up their video wrapped in Flash doesn't make it copy-proof either. Far from.

I can appreciate Hulu trying to keep content owners happy, but they must know that's a false security. TV episodes can be downloaded the same night they air, or earlier, elsewhere. In higher quality and at a faster rate. All that said, they'd be able to have much better security with their own software rather than relying on Flash through a browser. I don't however have any insight into what they're going to do with their own app.

I think the biggest concern for Hulu is what happens when they start charging for content? Much more significant than whether or not they'll move to serving video without Flash.

How exactly are they supposed to add any protection, besides restricting by IP address, to an HTML5 streamed video ?

True.

Yeah. You can't do much. The BBC had this problem when they implemented iPlayer for iPhones/iPods and it was defeated in minutes. Check it is a UK IP. Check that user agent matches something iPhoneish. Check that you've got a cookie from the iPhone version of the iPlayer website. Check that the request has the quirky ranges that only the QuickTime player on the iPhone gives.

YouTube alone has somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million videos. You think there are that many flash ads? (Honestly, I can't say; I got tired of dealing with animated gifs and javascript nonsense ages ago and installed an ad blocker. I do recall a few Flash ads before then. Anecdotally, my AdBlock logs would seem to indicate that it's blocked something in the neighborhood of 40 pieces of Flash in the same time that it's blocked thousands of other ads. To be fair, some of those other ones may have contained Flash once they were loaded.)

And I love how you dismiss entire hugely popular segments of the Internet because, I guess, if you include them it doesn't fit your argument.

That doesn't really make any difference, though. If a user wants to view something available only in Flash, it doesn't make any difference that it can also provide things he doesn't want. This is true of any medium. The US Mail provides both paychecks and ads. Do you want to stop getting your paycheck because you don't want any ads? (Yes, I know that's an antiquated example, but it still speaks to my point.)


Yes, it is. And a lot is not. H.264 support wasn't added to Flash until 2007. YouTube started in late 2005. That's two years, and probably more, worth of Flash video that wasn't in H.264. It's reasonably easy to stumble across videos that still aren't available in it. YouTube's HTML5 opt-in silently falls back to Flash when this is the case.


No, it has not. A choice between a product that doesn't contain Flash and another product that doesn't contain Flash is not any sort of proof about anything Flash-related. Get back to me in <x amount of time> (wouldn't want to imply a specific amount of time in my general speakings about the future. And "x" does not equal ten.) when Flash has become available on some other phone. You'll probably be right then.

But, once again, I don't care about the market. The market is not God. I care about choice. Apple has seen fit to limit the choices of its users. You agree that the license is bad, you agree that the app approval is bad, but some how those two bads add up to a good, as long as it restricts Flash. Or maybe that's not what you're saying. I don't know. I don't think I even care anymore.


If so, it's only because your fingers flap on the keyboard, but you aren't saying anything. You don't even respond to point-blank questions. You just respond and nit-pick at irrelevancies.


Well, that's a thrilling conversation. The iPhone sells well. That's a shocker. Who cares? Is Flash on another platform likely to make people switch? No. But some folks will be annoyed when they realize that folks with that other phone, whatever it is, can do something that they want to do that they can't.

Anyway, I'm really done this time. It's just pointless. I shouldn't have let myself get sucked up into this again. Trying to respond to your amorphous "arguments" is like trying to grab smoke out of the air; I just end up twisted in knots, not knowing which way is up. I'd really rather you didn't respond to point out that you don't get US Mail because you're Canadian, or whichever other trivial irrelevancy you want to prattle on about. I still have a desire to defend myself, and it's going to make my eye twitch to ignore it.

BItt, you're failing to see the point and I'm not sure you have one of your own but to say that Apple is somehow cheating you (or other consumers) by not offering Flash.

Why on earth would you add up all of YouTube's video and use that as a counter example against my point? YouTube is ONE site. It doesn't matter how many terabytes of video they have. It represents ONE use of Flash, which I mentioned, a video-service site. The majority of Flash usage, OTHER than for video-service sites, is for ads. Popular video service sites are all making or will be making their content accessible without Flash. Not all of them use Flash now and not all of them have ever used Flash. Apple's site has never used Flash for its video. None of the porn sites I visit stream video in Flash either.

Apple however are not limiting choice. It's your choice to buy or not to buy one of their products. You may want a notebook in Farrari red. Tough cookies if you also want it to be a MacBook.

The market is not important to you. It's important to Apple. It's important to every company big or small. It's the only metric that's measurable relating to what we're discussing. If you have never worked for yourself then I suppose you might not be ready to accept this reality.

Your line of arguing is wearing thin on me and I'm done responding to your points because they're not relevant to what I've been talking about. If you want a different type of argument, you should look for the next room over. But you interjected into a discussion that was ongoing to try and push some agenda of "choice" that has no bearing on anything but trying to dismiss Apple as too controlling. I've already said I agree with you there, they're controlling, and often, too controlling.

The iPhone is going to fail because it doesn't have Flash. I'll record that for later reference...

It's not Flash that restricts access to Hulu.com to US residents, so any failures of this aspect exist now as well with Hulu or any other site.



I'm not sure exactly what Hulu has deployed in its streams, but generally speaking, Flash is only going to stop someone from directly saving (downloading) the content. Are their streams even encrypted?

Without Flash, one could create a Javascript player to accomplish a similar feat. Without anything fancy like encryption or purging the playback buffer, it would be as trivial to save the streamed video file as it would with Flash.

Moving to a paid model, Hulu will want to deploy something new anyway. We'll have to see how it all plays out. Hulu may not be able to make the transition at all.

Yeah. The Flash player just stops you from downloading and saving the content. The server side would be the part that refuses to let you stream if you're outside whatever country boundary that it cares about.

Flash has something called SWF Verification to try to ensure that you're using whatever is the legitimate Flash SWF player for that site is though. The BBC enabled it for their Flash based iPlayer.

Was the market (provided one defines a segment of it accurately enough to make such statement) complaining about the lack of portable MP3 players that could host thousands of tracks?
No.
Then the iPod is released to the general public and it becomes a success.

So, besides the fact that you don't hear people complain, what data do you have to say that the market (again provided you define this clearly) would not appreciate Flash and prefer not having it over having it?
Clearly this is retorical. There's no such undebatable data. In fact, there are people in the market, - that is, it exists a market segment - who prefer the iPhone with FLASH or with similar technologies.

The proof is easily found: >> I << exist And, it seems, few others in this board. And, I think I am safe in saying that there are people out there who prefer being able to use YouTube than not being able to. They are in the "market", and form a market segment that Apple is pleasing less that it could.

This is simple. All other arguments are indeed interesting, but, again, unrelated to what stated above and previously by me.

It does not mean the iPhone will fail as a product. It does not mean I hate you either: I don't! . It simply means I am less happy with an Apple product than how I could have been, and others like me.


- The "market" as you call it is a collective, and should be treated statistically. Statistics describes groups, not individuals, and by selecting individuals you can form different groups: there are market segments that don't match you description of "market" and who are less happy without flash than with it.

- "People" will compare similar products only if you define as "people" the group of those who would do so. I would not. I am speaking precisely of the fact that Product A would have been better if...

- "People" will not find Flash as a factor pro-purchase only if you define "people" as those who would not.
I, instead, don't particularly like browsing on mobile devices. I find it ineffective most of the time, unpleasant, often frustrating just because of the screen size. Knowing that I will ALSO deal with several incompatibility issues, I am definitely not tempted to buy any mobile device to browse the internet. Still, IF I knew that I would have a full featured browser, be it IE, FF, Safari, as powerful as that in a desktop, then I may be thinking about such thing. I promise. I am talking about myself. I know.
The iPad itself, as a concept, would be more appealing to me. Todsay, crazy as I may sound, believe me I'd rather spend three times as much a get a Tablet with Windows 7 or any other "full" OS.
So, yes, it is for me a factor that contributes to determine whether I'd buy the iPad or not.

Any OTHER point is interesting, here, but this is the one I made when I said that as a consumer I am not happy. It's really simple and does not imply anything it does not say explicitly.

Taym, for the most part I do agree with you.

I'd never argue that you shouldn't want Flash or anything else on the iPhone or any other product. Your desires aren't "wrong." I simply stated that the lack of Flash was not holding back the iPhone nor is it holding back the iPad. In the grand scheme of things, Flash is but a small element of existing web sites, web browsing is a small part of these devices and compared to the whole of the potential of the iPhone and iPad, Flash is but a microscopic portion of what the device can/could/will do for the most part.

There will always be a few people that would use a device like the iPad to exclusively browse a Flash interface (such as a kiosk use) but really that's an extremely niche scenario. I've said before (many many times) that the iPad makes an amazing platform for vertically-oriented tools. But Apple have always been about the widest possible reach with their consumer products. It does mean they usually miss a number of specialized elements. It took a while to get Copy and Paste, now Multi-tasking. Both of those are infinitely more important than Flash IMO. I think to most other customers as well.

Apple pretty much single-handedly established the portable MP3 market. This doesn't really translate to a comparison with the lack of Flash on current products. The iPod was missing (and is still missing) certain features. None of those, like Flash on today's products, have held back its success as a product.

YouTube and other sites are viewable on the iPhone and iPad. Such sites are more usable on these devices than other handsets and similar products, what with specialized apps and all.

If you want a Windows 7 tablet, then go out and buy one now. Windows tablets have existed for years. That's not what the iPad is. Once you've used a device designed for touch input you will see how misguided and ill-conceived the idea of tablet products running a desktop OS are.

You're not alone here. There are plenty of people out there that want a full OS on a tablet device. Just not enough people to matter it seems. It's why that product segment has done atrociously over its lifetime. They've been trying for a long time too - what, 8 years now?

Microsoft understood "touch" as evidenced by their Surface project/product. But they've been unable or unwilling to do anything with it in the consumer space, excepting Zune to a small degree. Windows has been holding Microsoft back and the Windows-everywhere mentality is what's set them up for the back-seat position (in terms of innovation especially) in the 21st century.

Really? Maybe I've been too busy playing all the fun little Flash games to notice the ads.