It is about the money… not about Flash.
You may remember (or not) the controversy over the Commodore 64 App for the iPhone. Of course it finally did come (but minus the key little bit.. the Basic Compiler)
“Thank you for submitting C64 1.0 to the App Store. We’ve reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it violates the iPhone SDK Agreement; “3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).” Source: http://nexus404.com/
Sorry but anything that even Mr J says about (or not) about how crap Flash is or that it is a performance issue with the processor, or that device X can’t multi-task e.t.c are all for want a better word a lie.
See Flash or even the Commodore 64 Basic complier do something that is a much bigger threat to the Apple brand than stability issues. They are a threat to the bottom line. If you can make and download apps from anyone or anywhere, then you are not inside the walled garden. The real money is only to be made for Apple by keeping the gates to that garden all locked as possible. Once inside this garden it is often quite hard to get yourself out of it. Once you have all your music in Itunes, all your purchases in Itunes and no way to get them out, why would you move. Imagine if you could get Apps for your device and not be locked into the Apple Garden.
I have Flash running on a number of devices that are a lot older and not as “grunty” as the iPad tech specs say it will be. But all those that have drunk the Kool- Aid want you to believe that they removed Flash from their site around the time of the launch of the iPhone because it was just so buggy on the browser.
When the public can load any app on these devices without voiding the warranty (aka all of you that have Jail broken your device), then I will come back and fix this blog post. Something I am sure I won’t be doing in quite sometime.
In the mean time I will keep playing with Flash on my N95-8gb, and even Flash 10 on my Asus R2H whilst I multi-tasking doing other things on my devices as well.
If Apple weren’t so scared of the Basic Compiler from the C64 which was the computer of choice in 1982!, then the argument might be very different, however it is not.
I do not have a problem with Apple framing their business model in this way. Most business do this in one degree or another. Silverlight didn’t come out from Microsoft because they wanted to work hand in hand with Adobe. I do have an issue with them not just coming out and saying why.
It is about the bottom line to Apple fullstop.
