Ever since the original iPhone in 2007 landed without flash support the rumors of Adobe Flash coming to the iPhone in a future release are regular. Adobe even made its desire to be compatible with the Jesus phone public, but it seem that they have failed to please Apple. Given the remarks that Steve Jobs is said to be making about Adobe Flash these days, it seems unlikely that Apple would ever house this technology.
According to rumors Steve Jobs is advising media outlets (whom he is visiting for iPad content tie ups) to give up Adobe Flash and adopt alternative technologies like H.264 video, javascript etc on their websites. Apparently Adobe Flash has been buggy on Mac and Jobs considers it a CPU hog. The issue of security holes in Flash also seems to be an issue with Apple.
We were really hoping that the iPhone OS 4.0 would bring in some solution to render Flash sites on the iPad / iPhone / iPod touch; but it seems Steve Jobs is clear on his view – “we (Apple) don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology.”
Yes Apple is pushing HTML 5 aswell. I skipped that part as HTML 5 as of today isn’t a practical solution. Its still a year or 2 away from implementation. What Jobs is suggesting them is not HTML 5 from today, but other things until HTML 5 comes up!
I think once HTML 5 will get supported by a majority of browsers, Flash would certainly become redundant and yeah, I am waiting for that day when I can design a website with videos included simply by the use of tag; no flash junk..!!
(I am a little surprised that you did not talk about HTML 5)