I can acknowledge, even as an Apple zealot, that Jobs is a bit out of line here. That being said, though, I can't help but feel the synopsis provided as a bit...trite. Wow, Apple is protecting its money and its third-party devs instead of supporting a not-really-standard that hasn't actually improved in ages, and charges those devs to write on it?
LOTS of people are annoyed with Flash, particularly on the development side, and have been since long before this. Its memory performance is abysmal and its execution is inefficient at best, making it a truly lousy choice for ANY mobile platform in comparison to Java and the newly developing HTML5 (which actually renders a lot of Flash, especially for web production, moot).
Flash served a purpose - to get us to a point where web content was more interactive and easier to work with. But we're really getting to that point, now, and Flash is becoming the anchor weighing down new web tech.
Say what you want about Apple trying to make money (where is that a crime, anyhow, for a company? They're kind of supposed to protect their interests), but its SDK for the iPhone is FREE (as are all of its SDKs). Unlike Flash. Which is what Jobs was talking about. And last I checked, Apple wasn't in business to show generosity to Adobe, which actually stonewalled several innovations in its Photoshop and AfterEffects lines from coming over to Apple between CS2-CS4 (including proper SMP and 64b support, despite offering both for Windows). These two companies haven't really had a loving relationship for a little while.
AFAIK, the only "mobile" browser that supports flash is Skyfire, which is also in development for iPhone anyways. Even Opera doesnt support it, for the exact technical reasons above - memory and poor resource management. And Skyfire is quite new to the scene.
Of course, Apple could support Flash (or Flash Lite), particularly in MobileSafari, and then when pages load slow or glitch because of OoM or transmission errors, we can all get to bitch about how the iphone is crappy and slow...
That's my $0.02. That and another $1 might get you a cup of coffee.
