You can’t mention “Flash” and “iPhone” in the same breath without people getting a little huffy. It is honestly surprising how passionate people can be about not having Flash on the iPhone. Passion aside people have a lot of reasons not to have Flash on the iPhone.

While Flash would be nice on my iPhone, I’ll be damned if I want Safari crashing every time it comes to a Flash-based web site because of the poorly developed plugin software.
D9

That is a moderate approach to the issue. D9 is willing to trade stability for the lack of Flash. Other points revolve around how slow Flash is on OS X. Some people maintain that it will max out a Quad core Mac Pro (when I experimented with various Flash intesive sites my machines experienced only a moderate bump in CPU usage. I tried it on a MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac 3.0, and PowerMac G5 with similar results for each machine. I know, I know I own too many Macs). Then there is the issue of how it would run on the iPhone. The iPhone’s processor is slower than a full blown computers processor so it would have to be just awful.

Okay, so the complaints such as they were, (I’m leaving out a few) come down to stability, speed and the trashiness that is the world of Flash. It is easy to appreciate all those issues. Who would want an iPhone that crashed all the time? Who would want an iPhone that ran Flash so slowly that is was all but unusable.

But let’s hold on a moment. Are those valid reasons to keep Flash off of the iPhone? Just because Flash is horrible means nothing. There are plenty of horrible iPhone Apps. Being in the App Store doesn’t mean the app is worthwhile (obviously) it only means that Apple is planning a competing app anytime soon. You also have to wonder just how horrible the performance would be. I’ve seen demos of Flash running on the G1 and that machine sports a 528 MHz processor and is powered by Linux. Windows Mobile based phones can run the thing. Would it really be that awful on the iPhone’s 620 MHz ARM processor? Does it matter if it is awful?

Really, this is what it is seemingly coming down to: Is it better to have a choice to install Flash on your iPhone or better to have Apple dictate that decision to you. In general it is better to let the user decide. If you own a Mac you can install (or at least try) to install any program you desire. It doesn’t matter if it a script that can wipe your machine clean or install the latest hard drive hungry bloat ware known as Microsoft Office. Why should the iPhone be any different?

Well, there are obvious reasons. You wouldn’t want the iPhone sucking down ungodly amounts of data, or a phone that can pass along your data without your knowledge. There are a plethora of other reasons not to let a program on the iPhone platform but crappiness isn’t one of them.

But is there a legit reason to keep flash off the iPhone? Data, no. Crappiness, no. App Store rules? um, yeah. From Armas:

Apple clearly stated no Java or interpreted languages on iPhone.

If that is what is keeping Flash off the iPhone, if it is a case of Apple being consistent in what can make it into the App Store then it is hard to disagree with that decision. So no Flash for the iPhone until Apple changes the rules. I’m not sure that is the best move for the iPhone but I am positive that the more consistent Apple is with the App Store rules the better the iPhone environment will be.