Writing on the wall ...
SEVERAL major blows to Adobe's Flash player were made yesterday. And they're VERY serious to the future of Flash: Webkit 2, iAd, the iPad, and pushing the HTML5 standard. These are going to marginalize Flash, in my opinion, in a shockingly short amount of time. And keep in mind my statements are about how each technology and company is positioned for the FUTURE, not necessarily the present.
First, a couple of obvious points: Flash is extremely popular, but that is primarily because it is required to deliver both advertising and video content. You don't see a lot of mainstream web sites using Flash as the primary method of delivering their content outside of video or advertising.
So Apple is pushing the HTML5 standard into maturity. WebKit 2 is a huge boost to that on all platforms. If you actually look at how many browsers use Webkit, it's NEARLY ALL OF THEM, with the exception of IE and Firefox. Firefox plays decently with HTML5, but will always be getting better. IE ... well, we'll see but nobody really cares anyway. I almost pull for the explorer team because they're an underdog now.
From Apple's perspective, the WebKit 2 announcement means they are devoting resources to optimize the web experience around open standards instead of Flash. Why optimize for a proprietary standard when you can make everything on the web work quickly by making HTML5 work quickly? It's an obvious move, really. And they have partners in this endeavor with Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox.
The writing is on the wall. And it's funny to say in some respects, because Flash is so popular right now. But it will happen. Flash will be marginalized. I lament this a bit. The Flash IDE isn't that bad. Flash is actually a very pleasant framework to build applications for. But when Apple puts their brains and marketing muscle behind something you have to take notice. It's obvious Adobe will.
I wonder if this will sour Adobe's creative suite plans for the Apple platform?