Apple is not a company that can be easily influenced. They do things the way they think is right even when everybody else disagrees. Even when everybody predicts is going to cost sales. They’ve been doing it for more than 10 years and it’s working very well for them, they are not going to stop now. For Adobe, Apple is a lost cause.

I actually dislike both companies. Apple is building an extremely proprietary environment. They are much worst than Microsoft. Apple’s tax not only includes the operating system, it also includes every third party application. Not only they get a part of everybody’s cake, they decide who have cake and who doesn’t by controlling which applications get approval and which get rejected. If Apple ever dominates the industry, it’ll be the dark ages of computers.

Adobe is not much different with Flash. Flash is a proprietary and it works well on one and only one platform; if it does at all. Everybody else is left out. Flash has been making the web inaccessible for ages. I would be very glad if we can get rid of Flash.

If I were in charge of Adobe I would do something that would help the company remain a leader on the web and at the same time make Flash good: open source it.

I never understood why Adobe hasn’t open sourced Flash already. The specs are more or less open, there are alternative implementations, and they are not making any money by selling Flash. They make money by selling the tools to build Flash web sites and that’s not going to stop if they make Flash itself open source.

Before or while open sourcing I would make agreements with two companies: Google and HP. Make sure Flash is going to be included in Android, Chrome OS and Web OS. I would also put those phones and tablets in the hand of my developers (that is, Adobe’s), for free, as a gift, with the goal of making the Flash experience is absolutely thrilling.

I think that is Flash’s only hope.

I think iPad’s lack of Flash cause two things to happen:

• Slow down the adoption of the iPad: surely someone will say “No Flash, No iPad“.
• Speed up the adoption of HTML5: surely someone will consider using HTML5 to support the tablet.

Giving that the iPad is a closed device, probably the closedest non-phone computer consumers ever had access to and that HTML5 is good progress for the web, I consider both results of the iPad not having Flash positive. If I have to say anything about it, it’d be: please, stop trying to wake Steve Jobs up regarding this, you’ll ruin it.