while if they were abusing it, you'd be right, good luck proving it.
You are right, I never said Apple is stupid however they made a big mistake: changing the TOS just to refrain Flash apps from being converted to native iPhone apps, by doing so the same week Adobe released its packager Apple made its true intentions very clear and the regulators did not miss it.
Apple knows it, even if they did do it in order to "abuse their market dominance" (I don't believe they did), there's nothing to back up that claim unless Apple admits it. They can simply say, as they always have, that they feel Flash is not reliable enough for them to use on their device. That's not violating a law.
It's not that easy, it's one thing to fool the public, it is another to fool FTC or EU. It was easy for Apple to provide justification for the ban last year, Flash was just not ready for mobile but now is a different story... If Adobe successfully prove Apple wrong on all technical claims, what is left for Apple to justify the claim?
That being said, I still have not seen flash act reliably on the desktop, let alone the mobile platform.
Can you explain that? Most people do not have any issue with Flash whatsoever except on Mac so saying that Flash acting reliably on the desktop is yet to be seen does not really make any sense. There were and are issues and they have been acknowledged and addressed by Adobe, once again since 10.2 was released it is going to become harder and harder to say Flash does not work because more and more users around will have in their hand a phone that proves otherwise.
As far as it not being necessary on mobile, I almost never run across a site that needs flash on mobiles. The manufacturers who build their sites in flash have specially designed mobile versions, many major video sites are encoding their videos in HTML5 for mobile platforms, and the sites I run across on the desktop that require flash come from aimless browsing (often stumbleupon), something I just don't do on mobile phones due to the size and speed. True, this is just my personal experience, but the fact that most major sites (and several smaller ones) have mobile versions means flash isn't really a necessary part of browsing on mobile devices.
Allow me to copy and paste a few pieces from my blog post on the matter:
Lie #1: Web Video is converted to HTML5
SOME video on the web is ALSO encoded for HTML5 playback today because Apple abused its dominance to manipulate the mobile entertainment, digital content and application markets, by blocking on iPhone and iPad the de-facto standard for online media streaming and Rich Internet Application (RIA), also know as the “Adobe Flash Player”. Engineers from Youtube and Vimeo explained how Apple dictated the implementation of HTML5.
* HTML5 implementation has tripled their engineering time & cost.
“Apple’s stance also created significantly more work for sites like YouTube and Vimeo. In order to meet their users’ playback needs, their coding work could easily be doubled or tripled if they want to appear on Apple’s many mobile devices. And they absolutely do want to be on them. ‘You want your users to be able to playback video on any device they’re using, so we do the extra coding because it’s important to be on the iPad and the iPhone,’ said Vimeo g.m. Dae Mellencamp.”
Karen Idelson, Variety, November 24, 2010.
* HTML5 was implemented in addition to Flash and not instead.
“Google has made it quite clear that despite its general advocacy of open standards, it believes there’s still quite a bit of life left in Flash. In fact, it’s even baking it into its Chrome browser. Today, YouTube software engineer John Harding took to the site’s official blog. The gist of it: while HTML5 is great, it can’t do everything YouTube (or most mainstream video sites) need.”
Jason Kincais, TechCrunch, June 29, 2010.
* HTML5 is no replacement for Flash.
“While HTML5’s video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don’t support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs. Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.”
John Harding, Software Engineer, Youtube, June 29, 2010.
Lie #2: HTML5 Beats Adobe Flash.
HTML5 is an embryo markup language (also called a ‘draft’) that is being compared with a fully mature, full feature object oriented programming language called ActionScript, used to build enterprise class Flash apps.
Thinking that HTML5 with javascript (another developer’s nightmare itself) can do everything a serious programming language does is delusional, it would be like saying I can drive to the moon with my car, it does not matter how good the car is or how motivated I am, it’s just not going to happen.
Never will HTML5 get even close to Flash and the reasons are:
* HTML5 is a draft created in 2008 that is not expected to become a ‘Candidate Recommendation’ before 2012 and is not expected to become an actual W3C ‘Recommendation’ before 2022 or later (Source: Wikipedia).
* HTML5 is a specification that requires years of efforts before new features and improvments can be fully deployed.
* HTML5 is not a programming language nor does it permit the protection and / or monetization of digital content without depending on another proprietary system such as iOS or Playstation.
* HTML5 is not 100% consistent accross browser therefore it can be visually rendered differently by Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox or Opera on Windows or Mac or any combination of those. Some website might have parts or features that work on some browsers and not others, or render differently in each with additional discrepency depending on the operating system used (PC, Mac, Linux).
Meanwhile, Flash works the same everywhere and Adobe has recently proven its ability to roll-out breakthrough and new features in a matter of months if not weeks.
For instance, even though Apple refused to provide Adobe with a pre-release of the new MacBook Air in order to optimize Flash for it (screwing its own customers instead by removing the player), Adobe still cut the grass under Jobs feet by delivering a 10 fold performance improvment for Flash Player on all browsers, platforms and operating systems including the underpowered Apple MacBook AIR just weeks after its public release.
