Apple’s latest position on Adobe Flash (as articulated by Steve Jobs) was just released as I was putting the finishing touches on this post. The press release provides better insight into Apple’s position and it has a lot more weight than Steve’s petulant complaints about Flash crashing his browser.

Perhaps someone enlightened him that Apple’s Safari browser (not to mention its flagship operating system, OS X) has no problem hanging and crashing quite regularly without the help of Flash.

Personally, I haven’t been too concerned about the role of Flash on mobile devices. Until the iPhone, most mobile devices were marginally interactive, having minimally functional apps with bad user interface. The exceptions were messaging and e-mail on Blackberry. Those were probably the best success stories in mobile.

But Flash doesn’t help a mobile device the way it helps a browser. Mobile devices are now fully programmable network-aware computers with decent screens, storage, and speed. As an application creator, you’re not really compromised by developing in that environment.

Browsers on the Other Hand…

We can all tip our hats to HTML, the hyper-text document format that got the web rolling. But technologists kind of forget why HTML got things rolling. It wasn’t because it was a particularly brilliant technology for user interface, it was because it was so accessible to so many people.

HTML has always been a really poor base on which to build interactive software. All due credit to the human ingenuity that has spent the last twenty years trying to pretend that a web page is not a page, but the current mix of HTML, CSS, and Javascript (not to mention the myriad of server-side frameworks) used to create many interactive websites is nothing short of a Mongolian cluster f… ..  . I mean, a train wreck.

Whatever its failings, Flash has been, so to speak, the electric sheep of which androids dream. Based on a simple layer and frame animation model that even kids can understand, Flash has always been more powerful and expressive, but also more accessible for content creators trying to create interactive multi-media.

So I think that Steve Jobs and I have the same view about browsers  ;-)  … a great place to read pages but not a good place to build Apps. Because if Steve thinks that HTML or HTML5 and openness are soooo good, why not make HTML5 the fundamental programming model of the iPhone?

Uh huh. I thought so.

Still…

Adobe’s announcement that Flash CS5 would produce native apps for devices (iPhone and Android to be specific) was the first time, in my view, that Flash became relevant to mobile devices.

Apple spoiled the party as you know, and while there are other mobile devices, to be sure, the loss of iPhone and iPad as target platforms for Flash development takes a big bite out of the benefit of developing in Flash. The portability of the content.

I’m a bit morose about this high-handed approach to an entire development community–one who’s aesthetic values align closely with Apple’s. It’s hard to fight it, and as I’ve said before, it harms Apple’s customers and our customers.

But let’s be clear about one thing, not including Flash in the iPad browser is not about limiting the back-door for applications on the iPhone or iPad: it’s egotistical chest-beating on the part of Apple, essentially saying, we will dictate what the web is. Microsoft has been outflanked and punished in the past for that kind of behavior with Internet Explorer. Perhaps the same will happen to Apple?

So What?

For Flash, however, this may be a bit of a turning point.

In the new environment of highly interactive devices, Flash becomes something of a legacy technology. “Legacy” is often a derogatory term in technology but that’s not what I mean here. Java is now a legacy technology. Meaning that it’s an established technology used widely throughout the business world for application software development. But it’s not the next big thing. There is very little heat and light around Java as a technology.

I don’t have to predict, I’m just observing, the attention getting software, the experimental work is being written for the iPhone, and by extension, the iPad.

So What Next?

Well, for a company like DesignAxiom this is a bit of a vindication. When the entry point to the Internet becomes something like an iPad or an Android device, it’s a fully programmable network enabled device with advanced UI capabilities. Flash or not, browsers of all stripes are going to look clunky and dated compared to the network-aware apps being developed for the new devices.

Our vision was always about connected applications that surpassed the limitations imposed by browsers: applications that looked better, that were more responsive, more interactive, and more scalable. In short, applications that gave a better user experience.

Apart from that, I don’t like predictions, I prefer observations. And what I observe is that the iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices are generating excitement amongst consumers, and businesses, and developers. And I think that’s a good thing.

I also think that those who believe that Apple’s rejection of Flash is the death knell for Flash are wrong. Flash is now an accepted technology not only in the web design space but in IT departments. It has a legitimacy (conferred by Adobe) that it never had with Macromedia, and it’s still an excellent choice for cross platform applications, browser-based rich media, and digital marketing campaigns.