On the 5th, Network World ran the article Three Reasons Why iPhone Won’t Get Adobe Flash. The reasons were: Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone, the iPhone is created so it won’t support Flash (the article cites Apple not allowing plug-ins for mobile Safari), and Apple is betting on a different standard (HTML 5).

Funny that they missed out the most likely reason: Flash on the Mac—specifically the Flash plug-in—sucks.

On Leopard, the Flash plug-in is so unstable that Apple sandboxed browser plug-ins in Snow Leopard’s Safari. Interestingly, I’ve had one Safari crash since upgrading to Snow Leopard, compared to at least one per hour on Leopard. The Flash plug-in process, however, keels over with alarming regularity.

Also, put a PC next to a Mac and run some complex Flash content. Watch in horror as a knackered old PC outperforms a shiny new Mac—something that just doesn’t happen elsewhere.

Apple might be a huge control freak, but it’s proved plenty of times in the past that it will let other companies into its play-pen. However, said companies have to prove themselves worthy. I have no doubt that if the Flash plug-in was an amazing piece of Mac engineering, Apple would—at least now the App Store is hugely successful—allow Adobe to create the equivalent for iPhone and iPod touch. But since the Mac version of the plug-in is such a buggy, sluggish pile of garbage, why would Apple let the Flash plug-in anywhere near the mobile version of Safari, where it could at a stroke create the impression that Apple’s handheld platform and browser are slow, bug-ridden and unstable?