A few questions:
[*]Do you want Apple to provide support by licensing Flash and adding it to Safari--increasing the development costs the browser?
This isn't necessary. It's a free plugin. You don't have to offer plugins to the USER in order for Apple to add it to Safari on their end and stick a preference option in there. They already have preference options for many of their apps as do 3rd party apps.
[*]Do you want Apple to provide support by licensing Flash and adding it to the iOS--increasing the development costs of the browser?
It's free. It's a plugin. Apple has NEVER made this argument even once as to why they do not include Flash with iOS. They include it with OSX and it does not add anything to the cost. So you have no point to make. Apple does not include it in iOS because they feel it's crap and want to push HTML5.
[*]Do you want Apple to add a plug-in architecture to iOS--increasing its development costs, increasing its complexity, and decreasing its reliability?
Plugins already exists in Safari. They actually REMOVE features from Safari for mobile, not add them. If you think there are no internal plugins for Safari already in iOS devices, I think you're mistaken.
[*]Do you want to treat Flash preferentially relative to other third-party commercial closed-source technologies such as Silverlight, et. al.?
This is about users wanting to access the entire Web, not about Apple helping Adobe. You don't seem to get that. They could easily add Silverlight as well, but it has very little market penetration so there isn't a large segment of iPhone/iPad users complaining about the lack of Silverlight. They DO complain about the lack of Flash because so many sites require it.
[*]Do you really want to add an on-off switch to each third-party closed-source title--necessarily increasing the complexity of iOS?
There are ALREADY preference settings for any number of applications (including 3rd party Apps, BTW) for things that the user might want to adjust. So YES, I would want preference options for anything I might want to change. I'm sorry you think that is so darn weird to have a preference editor for an application. This is standard on all software everywhere. Basically, your entire argument seems nonsensical to me. You seem to want to try to invent reasons other than "Steve doesn't like it" to not offer Flash to iOS users.
The reasons to include Flash are simple. Many users WANT it first and foremost and Apple should listen to its users. Flash allows iOS users to access the entire web, instead of having huge gaping holes in it. It takes up very little space. It's free. I could be disabled by the user if they feel the performance lacks or it's buggy.
I've seen not one single valid point as to not include it except that Steve doesn't like it or wants to harm Adobe (and unfortunately harms his own users as well in the process by taking part of the Web away from them). Yes, it's a 3rd party program and not a web standard, but then so is Quicktime and Apple obviously includes that despite its non-standard nature. Flash isn't very efficient, but the iPad is more than powerful enough to use it and the iPhone could certainly use it on a lot of sites and hence the suggestion of a preference option to disable it. Even if Apple suddenly wants to support open standards (after years of pushing their own), HTML5 isn't at parity with Flash (and probably never will be for most features, not just showing basic video) and until it is, Flash isn't going anywhere. This means part of the WEB will require Flash and if Apple doesn't offer it, their devices will be handicapped and their users unable to access parts of the Internet. This is bad and unnecessary PR for Apple, IMO.
Frankly, you could sum up your entire post as "I don't like Flash and so I don't want it in iOS" but instead you choose to create straw-men. You're wasting my time responding to things that don't matter so I won't be responding again.
