I'm pretty new to Flash so I don't know all the technical details under the covers (e.g. Flash is buggy on Macs, who supported what video format first, etc) but one thing that strikes me as odd in the manifesto published by Apple is the attack of Flash for not being open. That strikes me as hypocrisy.
The people defending Apple on these threads are basically saying we, as developers targeting these devices, need to go learn some limited set of languages hand-picked by people at a corporation. That's not open. Further, the corporation controls the distribution of software through the Apple Store. If the corporation doesn't like our software for some reason they won't allow it. That's not open. As we all now know now the corporation will not only control the distribution of end user applications it will also be actively involved in censoring the software platforms that may be used on the devices...even to the point of not allowing Flash of J2ME, two of the most widely used platforms out there. That's not open. If you think Apple is going to win and corner the market on mobile devices for eternity go learn Objective C and whatever obscure languages they come up with. I personally am not going to put all my eggs in one basket in case Apple ends up with 20% of the market share instead of 90%. IMO truly open devices will always be out there and they have a built in advantage over proprietary technologies like i*.
