I've got this same link from my friend, and it's funny how it serves the facts... well, flash was in fact the first to use h.264 codec for video on the web (could be that some other existed before, but the HTML5 wasn't the first, that's for sure), and it does use hardware rendering to display that on Windows. It is true it uses pure CPU rendering on Macs and both sides blame it on poor cooperation of the other side. I think, maybe one valid point that he makes is that Adobe didn't invest to much into mobile market until very recently... and, to be honest, flash rendering may be more optimized... like using platform available graphics tools - be it DirectX or OpenGL. It is also true that flash is kind of stuck in it's development... well, the language hadn't seen any significant change in years... But I don't think that what Apple cares about is how flash performs... not is it at all familiar with the situation around the product... For example I have Adobe tools to develop for flash on my Windows installation, but on Linux I have only non-Adobe tools, which is more by accident, but, anyway, this kind of contradicts what he says about non openess of the platform.
I also think that the main profit from banning other popular development tools like .NET and Java from Macs Apple may hope for good revenues from selling their development tools... Think about that due to iProducts popularity the popularity of Obj-C grew a lot. It was a marginal language in terms of penetration until iPhone... So, they may hope to build a community of developers, who would develop in this language and thus became dependent on Apple's tools and the entire ecosystem... well, just like there's a lot of C# programmers in the world, not because it's the best language ever, but because of the demand. I think that Mac world sees the surrounding world from the entrenchment level, it's like "after all those years!" they are going to win one marketing war. They won't think about that their "victory" may turn into much larger loss on a general scale. Like, what good will come out of promoting obsolete technologies like HTML and JavaScript? And that's after it's been proven many times that the disadvantages are inherent to the technology and it is probably seeing it's last years... Well, for me going back to making web apps in HTML and JavaScript would be like dark ages comparing to any technology, not necessarily Flash, that offers compiled language and better integration with the native API... There may be to many marketing factors involved, of which I have little knowledge... and this may sound out of place... but, what would be if Abobe have cooperated with projects like HaXe and GNash? Or, offer to download the SWFTools' AS3 compiler along with Flex / Flash Builder? Or, at least bring their existence to the public attention somehow. What I'm saying is, this will not be a turning point in this pure battle of commercial interests, but, maybe it's a good time to put the plans of world domination aside and invest a bit more in the technical aspect of things?
