> But the fact that the main use for Flash on the web these days, beside video and unusable websites, are animated flash ads that use up 40% of my much more powerful Macbook Pro's CPU time means I'm in no hurry to have flash on the phone
In my opinion, this is moot point. Annoying ads aren't going to be limited to Flash. HTML5 ads aren't going to be more fun.
I was talking mostly about the CPU utilization, not just the annoyance factor. I would hope that the HTML5 equivalent would be less power-hungry.
What flash ads? Just use AdBlock.
My point was that that is one of the main uses of Flash, and that an extremely simple/common flash implementation is enough to burn a huge number of CPU cycles for no benefit.
No user benefit. But there's nothing stopping advertisers from making crappy HTML5 canvas ads, and those are guaranteed to burn even more of your CPU cycles. So I call shenanigans on that argument.
Apple controls the iPhone's HTML5 renderer and feels much more confident in its performance. "There's nothing stopping advertisers from making crappy canvas ads" is not the same thing as "canvas ads will suck at least as much power on average as Flash ads."
They were separate points. Canvas is inherently more computationally expensive than Flash at this stage of the technology. As canvas advances, so does flash -- unless Flash dies off completely, Canvas ads will always suck more CPU cycles than Flash ads.
"unless Flash dies off completely, Canvas ads will always suck more CPU cycles than Flash ads."
Who says they'll progress at the same rate? That's ridiculous. Flash is at least 10 years old and has been in extremely heavy use, so it's likely plateaued in terms of performance on most platforms. Canvas (and the rendering engines for it) are very new by comparison.
But the fact that the main use for Flash on the web these days, beside video and unusable websites, are animated flash ads that use up 40% of my much more powerful Macbook Pro's CPU time means I'm in no hurry to have flash on the phone, openness dogma be damned. When Jobs limits my general purpose computers, I'll be angry, but until then, I'm glad he's making the tough design decisions instead of just letting the device be a free for all.