Apple released an older version of Flash in Snow Leopard, rather than delaying Snow Leopard to include the newer version. One side effect of the “outrage” over this is even more arguments against including Flash on the iPhone. Apple can’t see much of an upside to including Flash when they hear stuff like this: “Gruber apparently considers the possibility of postponing the release of Snow Leopard in order to coordinate with Adobe to be unreasonable. If postponing Snow Leopard is out-of-bounds…” (Emphasis mine.)

Look, delaying Snow Leopard on Adobe’s Flash schedule is absolutely unreasonable. There should be no equivocation about it. If there’s any one piece of software that Apple should not delay their releases for, it is Flash.

The more I read about how Apple “screwed up” by not including a version of Flash that was only a week old, the more I understand Apple’s hesitance in adding Flash to the iPhone, too. Jeffrey Czerniak goes on to add that “when Apple adds a piece to the system, it accepts the responsibility of keeping customers safe from any vulnerabilities in that new piece”.

Flash is the buggiest piece of software that I use regularly. Apple has no control over its development. If including it means that Apple “accepts the responsibility of keeping customers safe from any vulnerabilities” in Flash, there’s no way Apple can include it on the iPhone. Not as pre-installed software. There’s no way they can include any third-party software on the iPhone, unless it has a much better record than Adobe has with Flash.

Is Czerniak right? He might be. But that’s also an argument for only shipping the iPhone (or the Macintosh) with software that was written by and is under the full control of Apple.