Apple has published a well-written open letter from Steve Jobs about the iPhone/iPad vs Flash kerfuffle.
Being used to the JVM, I will admit that the Flash Player does not seem as fast or robust. But I do find it to be a fairly pleasant development environment. And it is very good at what it was designed for.
The real problem I have with the open letter is the last, most important reason Jobs lists. It boils down to: we just want to protect our developers from making bad choices (as defined by us). By force if necessary. This is just so wrong for so many reasons.
If Apple wants to ban the Flash Player from their platforms, fine. But don't try to dictate what languages developers can use under the guise of "supporting open standards." Apple, if the use of ActionScript leads to inferior applications, they will be killed off by the native applications. The point is: fair competition should always be allowed to determine the winner.
If Adobe's tools make it easy for developers to create nice applications that people want to use, you do everyone a disservice by imposing additional artificial restrictions on your already closed-garden app store. Stop hindering free competition!
I really enjoy developing applications on my brand new MacBook Pro. But my next mobile device is going to be powered by a little green robot. Not because I want to make a statement. Just because I want to be able to decide how to write applications for my own device. And for me personally, neither Objective-C nor HTML5 are appealing choices.
Just my worthless opinion. We now return to our regularly scheduled JavaFX addiction.
