The problem for video producers is not any love for the format — I agree with your assessment of Flash on the Mac — but pure dollars and cents, both with conversion and the ad management toolset. (Take a look at any of the full episodes offered by a broadcast network website for ad examples.) Right now, those sites only see pure h.264 as increased cost (admittedly, not much) and more difficulty in managing/booking revenue. Nobody is going to switch under those conditions.

I get that you do not want flash on the phone. For my part, I just want to be able to view video from any provider; non-flash-wrapped h.264 is fine (actually preferable) for me. If Apple wants people to use it instead of FLV, great — they have to provide compelling business reasons to the video providers of the world. To date, they have not. I worry that, if they cannot, and refuse to support FLV, some other handset will seize that market opportunity, and hurt the iphone’s share.

Openness: Yes to h264, but Flash does far more than just video… like apps and lots of them.

Gumming up: If you don’t want it, turn off the plugin.

But to deny the masses based on your arguments heretofore, comes across as elitist. Especially given the fact that you’d have the ability to turn the plugin to the off position. I don’t care if it’s ‘off’ by default as long as people can make a personal choice.

However, that Flash wrapper is what’s gumming up my Mac performance (bloated and buggy) so I’m still not sad to see it not gumming up my iPhone performance at this point…

Firefox and some w3c standards seized an opportunity because a critical mass of developers (including me) got fed up with the stagnancy of IE over the course of years. H264 vs Flash will need a similar fallow period from Adobe in order to grab that foothold, and, if Adobe were given to standing still, we would all be on the more open, “better for the web” svg, a web standard since 1999. As the challenger, the onus is on h264 and its backers to prove it is a superior format for a business to use. That alone will determine if h264 becomes another CSS or another SVG.

A more appropriate example is OpenGL — an open, powerful platform for 3D graphics. Not wanting developers to easily become cross-platform, Microsoft came out with DirectX. If you used OpenGL, you could easily port your game between Windows and the Mac, and Linux (or, heck, SGI) if you were so inclined. If you used DirectX, you tied yourselves deeply to Windows. For a while, OpenGL was even technically superior to DirectX. However, OpenGL supporters used openness and purity as their sole rallying cries, while Microsoft bent over backwards to provide developer tools. The choice boiled down to reaching 100% of the market (OpenGL) vs. reaching 95% of the market (DirectX) more quickly and cheaply. The game market did not so much vote with their feet as stampeded to Windows, adding another crippling blow to Mac market share. Over time, DirectX surpassed OpenGL in many areas, simply because of its heavier use.

h264 is nice technology, but nice technology alone has never been enough. Flash does more than just video, has far greater market penetration, an established developer base, and far superior developer and management tools. The Quicktime world will at least equal, if not surpass those; openness alone has never been enough to capture a market.

HTML5, H.264, etc. are better than Flash for the future web, same as Firefox and WebApps. Those sites shouldn’t change for Apple, they should change for themselves.

Anti Flash: Complaints: Only used for porn and banner ads. Battery consumption. The ‘Hot crotch’ complaint. Remedy: Require 1000’s of video streaming entities to convert to h264 to cater to one entity.

Pro Flash: Complaints: Can’t view a very large percentage of the Internet. Remedy: Require two companies to collaborate on a solution to meet the demands of the overwhelming majority.

What seems reasonable? Do we need Captain Obvious for some guidance? Do you think Apple put the brakes on Flash to stand in solidarity with narrow-minded ignorance?

For those of you wondering why it has taken so long for Apple to ‘come to their senses’, here’s the 411. Money and ego.

Money: Now that App Store has hit critical mass, the threat of Flash applications overtaking iPhone apps is no longer a threat to Apple. So Apple can now begin to entertain this issue. (Yes, Flash does a lot more than just play videos).

Ego: Android is just now starting to put pressure on Apple. It’s obvious that Android’s multi-hardware OS is not doing circles around the iPhone OS, however, Google has a toy that Steve does not: Flash. And it won’t take long for Steve to add the toy to his repertoire. It wasn’t important that iPhone users were shouting ‘Flash’ from the rooftops. It’s more important that someone else has something that Apple does not.

Pierce the veil of ‘FlashLite is too little’ and ‘Flash is too big’ and you get money and ego.

Simply put, there is no “fault” on the part of any of the video sites. They are no more obligated to provide an h264 version of their content than Apple is to support flash. Sure, if they want to reach whatever fraction of the 13m iphones out that heavily view videos, they should, but if it is not worth their time and money to do so, that is their choice. Apple (and iphone customers) have to prove to them we are worth it, not the other way around. While 13m potential viewers seems like a large amount, it is trivial compared with the larger and more easily monetizable (through banners and in-stream ads) audience from flash-capable browsers. Thinking that any company has some sort of moral obligation to provide a specific format, much less stick to a standard is wishful thinking, at best.

Content sites, like any other company, will go where their business requires them to go. That could be flash, quicktime, or something new. (As long as it is not RealPlayer ) If Apple cannot convince them h264 is the way to go, they need to get on board with whatever format they choose, or be prepared to cede the iphone’s top media spot to whatever device does.

If implemented in any other form than the quicktime app, i’d rather leave it.