Well power users complain because they still need to use those things. Mainstram users don't. I can remember starting my career well after the introduction of USB flash drives and still getting software on CD or even floppy if we went back a few versions. We laughed at the fact that our computers still had floppy drives even while we were loading software from a handful of the bastards.

If you buy a device that lacks flash support, and five years later everyone else finally gets around to trying to stop making things in flash, then it was a stupid idea for the device to lack flash support at the time you bought it.

Sure, a device can still be wildly successful even if its missing something important, but that doesn't magically make it a good idea at the time it was done.

The replacements for flash suffered from poor performance for a long time.

Apple's ditching Flash with essentially no downsides beyond short-lived and short-sighted marketing mockery from competitors is evidence it wasn't a "stupid idea".

Flash still suffers from poor performance to this day, let alone back then, and even on full desktop devices (hell, it'll turn on a Mac Pro's fans). Flash on phones was a miserable idea to start with.

I like how you assume that anyone who disagrees with you must just be some kind of an idiot who bases his opinions off of marketing gimmicks and the opinions of Apple's competitors.

I was basing my opinion off of my personal experiences. For years after IOS devices hit the market, flash dominated certain types of content on the web. The lack of flash support meant that a user couldn't really view these sites on an IOS device.

Also, in spite of flash's performance issues, for a long time it seemed to perform better than HTML5-based video players. Youtube's HTML5 player remained an opt-in experimental feature for so long for a reason, it simply didn't work as well as the normal player.

And yet, in this specific instance, despite the downmodders, the radio is a feature added to the iPod despite years of Apple naysaying. It is the direct opposite of what you're claiming - Apple held out against the tide, then caved.