<i>developers having to make iPhone specific version of their app</i><p>No, that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is that if they <i>do</i>, or if they use HTML5, they're still presenting a better quality product to users of this platform than they would using Flash. To Apple, that is a far more important thing than what they're potentially losing from not supporting Flash. Nobody "has to" develop iPhone apps any more than people "have to" develop Flash apps for the web. It's all about what experience you want to deliver to what audience.<p>Right now, there are compelling reasons to go either way or even both ways. I'm just saying there will never be a time when going in the direction of Flash-based web apps will get you access to the iPhone/iPad audience, an audience which is growing, unlike the Flash audience. So yeah, I think Apple made the right decision both for their own product and for developers who care about the quality of experience they can provide and the money they can make than they do the particular platform they use.<p>Obviously this makes Flash developers unhappy, and Adobe is doing the best they can to cater to those developers with CS5, even if it hastens their own demise.<p><i>They're locked into the iPhone and you have to pay $99 to deploy them on a real one.</i><p>Flash apps are locked into the Flash runtime, further locked into whatever platform assumptions you make about performance, etc., and the developer tools are considerably more expensive than $99. You don't get the distribution or sales channel of the App Store (which in spite of all it's faults is still a very valuable thing). If you're developing games, you're going to be giving a cut to whatever sites you're hosted on, etc.<p>I'm not saying that's worse. It's just a different trade-off, and as long as you're depending on any platform vendor, you're always going to be getting a little bit screwed. The question is really about how dependent, how screwed, and how strong is the platform.<p>The same applies to an open platform like HTML5. It may have the market penetration to kill Flash for every use, but the overall outlook is pretty good.<p><i>But Flash is the only thing that can deliver that right now on desktop (and cover a reasonable audience). </i><p>Yeah, but we're not really talking about the desktop when we talk about Flash. We're talking about the web, and the web is increasingly used from machines that aren't desktops or laptops. Flash may be installed on 98% or so of desktops and laptops, but if you include "all devices capable of using the web", Adobe's share is much lower and is actually <i>shrinking</i>, and not just because of Apple's products. In terms of who you can reach, Flash is on much shakier footing than most people realize.