"Don't hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe's Flash software: Apple's terms-of-service agreement prohibits it....Allowing Flash — which is a development platform of its own — would just be too dangerous for Apple, a company that enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it. Flash has evolved from being a mere animation player into a multimedia platform capable of running applications of its own. That means Flash would open a new door for application developers to get their software onto the iPhone: Just code them in Flash and put them on a web page. In so doing, Flash would divert business from the App Store, as well as enable publishers to distribute music, videos and movies that could compete with the iTunes Store"

Plausible explanation but of course there is no way Apple can let this continue in the long run - everyone wants Flash on their mobile devices. Zero chance for Apple to keep the lid on like this, imho. What do you think?

Picture via Flickr - well done Martin!

Found this today

Context: my own video on Sharing 2.0

"Embracing the hyperlink ethos of the Web to a degree not seen before, news organizations are becoming more comfortable linking to competitors acting in effect like aggregators. Fundamentally we are addressing a common desire for comprehensiveness. The desire of people to find the news and information that they want from their most trusted sources. The era of the walled garden is over."

"The tight-lipped corporate giant recently made a move toward transparency when it lifted its iPhone non-disclosure agreement. The unpopular policy prohibited iPhone application developers from discussing their coding techniques. Lifting the NDA may hurt Apple by exposing the inner workings of the iPhone to competitors like Google and Nokia. But increasingly open competitors and disgruntled developers may have forced Apple's hand..."

This last sentence is important - this is happening everywhere: openness trumps closedness, trust trumps control, and increasingly so. Give it another 18 months, riding on the crest of the wireless mobile broadband explosion fueled by powerful mobile devices, and everyone will be busy showing us - the people formerly known as consumers - how open they are, and how much they will empower us and deserve our trust.

Look at this key sentence in Apple's explanation why -until now- they required NDAs for the iphone app store developers:  "We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work"

The fear of being ripped off caused them to want to control the people that worked with and for them - their biggest fans and most important users! Sound familiar? In the future, this is a risk that you'll just have to take - you cannot publish something and then build a remote control safe 'catch' into it. My prediction: watch for Apple dropping the DRM from iTunes in the near future, as well -because now, really, Friction is Fiction.

More from Wired:  "So what gives with the openness? One of the things that's happening to Apple is that it's less able to keep secrets than it used to be, because it has a broader supply chain and broader distribution," said Roger Kay, an Endpoint Technologies analyst. "And because it's dealing with parties that need plans -- partners as well as some customers -- they need to disclose their plans. Kay explained that Apple isn't alone anymore; the company is now working more closely with partners, such as iPhone developers, mobile carriers and so on. That inevitably forces the company to open up..."

In other words, you can't go it alone anymore, you can't keep the lid on people that are adding value to your enterprise, and you can't dominate a decentral ecosystem - anymore.

Welcome to the End of Control, Apple?!;)

Quotes:

"My complaint is that the App Store is the only sanctioned method to get apps on the iPhone, that only “blessed” apps get in the door, and all of those apps are essentially crippled apps, as compared to the full functionality of the “jailbreaked” apps..."      I totally agree.

Alex goes on: "The point of this post is to ask why Apple seems to be afraid of competition? It has produced a revolutionary new device, putting computing power and Internet access in the palm of anyone’s hand, but then holds it (and the applications on it) back from competing in the full market place. Apple’s rhetoric is that the iPhone is the über-phone, and evangelists like me are spreading the word, and the millions of iPhones sold so far are evidence of that. Apple says it has the best solution for creating and distributing applications for the iPhone. If those statements are true, why not instead of locking the iPhone and its apps down, let them stand on their own merit and compete against other offerings in the open market? The pricing subsidy, the crippling of official SDK applications, and the limitations of who can sell what in the official App Store each hold the iPhone back from reaching its potential. It’s already amazing, but the competition would make wireless carriers’ services better, it would make the applications better, and it would competitively lower the iPhone’s price instead of artificially relying on this subsidy-model shell game. Why not open up a little, Apple?"

He makes a very good point here. My question is this: are we willing to forgive Apple's relentless control desire for what some of us think is the best possible walled garden of mobile goodies we can get at this time? How does one weigh against the other? Where does the legitimate compromise end, and where does the wall-building start? Is this for the good of Apple or the good of the people formerly known as consumers?  Please comment below. 

And don't forget to visit my other blog over at Mediafuturist.com (where I post a lot more regularly - for now!)