That’s right, I said it. And I mean it.

He’s a world renown innovator and brilliant man, but he recently made a huge misstep. Steve’s argument against Flash is fundamentally flawed. Below, I have quoted a segment from his blog post, “Thoughts On Flash”.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Steve is absolutely right. Adobe’s general vision is to provide developers with the means to create applications for every “screen” through Flash. The issue Steve brought up of “the lowest common denominator” is a real problem, as it may negatively impact more advanced and capable platforms in true multi-platform development scenarios.

Steve is either forgetting something or intentionally leaving out a critical component that disrupts his entire argument against Flash. Apple fully regulates the iPhone/iPad OS app store. It is not an open application marketplace like Google’s Android OS. They are the judges who ultimately determine the feasibility of all applications being accepted into the marketplace. If the iPhone/iPad OS app store was open, Steve’s argument would not be fundamentally flawed. Steve is worried about his platform getting watered down because of low quality (flash) applications becoming available. Why would Apple have to worry about this when they regulate the quality of content and application performance!?

If Steve truly wants to take over the world, he cannot alienate developers like he has recently. Apple should welcome all developers, especially Flash programmers who makeup a significant portion of the web community. Instead, he has strategically and foolishly chosen to abuse his power by driving a massive wedge into the Internet.

Guess who gets hurt the most? You the consumer. Thanks Steve.