Thoughts on Flash...and Apple

Wow.  St. Stephen blasts Adobe with a load of arrogance that even Steve Ballmer can't manage.

I wanted to take this opportunity to post my thoughts on all of this.

First there's open.  Apple isn't really open.  Heck, I can't (legally) take my legally-purchased copy of OSX Snow Leopard and put it on anything except a Mac.  If I had an iPhone or an iPad, I'd be limited to the software that they say is okay, not anything I damn well please (like I can with my Blackberry Storm and I hear Android users can do).

Second, there's the full web.  Yeah, I know.  I consume it every day.  I play Flash-based Facebook games.  I view Flash-based videos.  I've tried playing some Flash-based videos on my Blackberry (which also doesn't support Flash...yet).  There's more to say here.  75% of the web's video is in H.264, but it seems that a lot of the videos I want to see are in Flash.  I also don't give a damn that there are thousands of games in the iTunes App Store when the ones I care about are on Facebook.

Third, there's reliability, scalability, and performance.

I don't know what to write here that St. Stephen hasn't already.  Flash is the number one reason that Macs crash.  My work PC doesn't have the same problem.  So why is it that after years of Flash performing poorly and crashing on Macs has NOBODY DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT?

I'm not going to go on.

Here's the deal, and I think 99% of computer users feel the same way I do.  I want a computer that works and "just works" every time.  I want Flash to work, Facebook to work, I want to install things myself and I don't want to be limited to what Big Brother says I can install.  I know with such great power comes great responsibility, but I also expect that the OS vendor will keep up with security updates to components in their operating system.

My next computer is looking like a PC.  God, I hate to type that, but Ubuntu is looking really cool over Parallels...probably a lot cooler on dedicated hardware.