I have been watching the ongoing spat between Adobe and Apple about how Flash is “not allowed” on the iPhone and iPad OS.

Apple control the iPhone and iPad OS very carefully, to ensure that the user experience is as good as it can be. This means that they try not to allow dubious apps in the App Store (although there were all those fart apps – did people really pay money for those?), and it means that they are now telling developers that they cannot use third-party libraries that sit between the app and the OS.

I mentioned this second issue in my previous post about iPhone OS v4, and how in my view it makes perfect sense for Apple to do this, because relying on a third-party library to be bug-free and to use all the latest OS features (as well as to be updated in a timely fashion when new OS features are released) is dangerous for Apple.

Flash in particular is a contentious point, because on the MacOS, it performs horribly. Even when using the 10.1 beta versions, it is horribly slow – you get mouse cursor lag on a Core 2 Duo CPU with ample RAM. So in my opinion, Apple are right to say to Adobe that Flash should not be allowed on their OS until it works. Basically.

Well, after all the posturing, and the immature ads Adobe has taken out saying how much they love Apple “but …”, I had another thought: it’s time Adobe showed the world how good their Flash Player is on the iPhone!

Adobe should release a Flash Player that can be installed on a jailbroken iPhone or iPad.

On a jailbroken iPhone or iPad, you you can install anything, from bash to a clunky multitasking implementation, to background apps that monitor the way the phone is being used. Absolutely anything.

So …

Go on Adobe – you are saying that your Flash Player is so good, and how it will work so well on the iPhone, despite the fact that you have not yet managed to get it working to “release” quality on Android, or any other mobile platform yet. Lets see what you’ve got!

Apple say that Flash content relies on mouse-hovers, and that won’t work so well on an iPhone or iPad – so prove them wrong!

Apple say that Flash Player is unreliable (and the videos you can find of it dying horribly during a demo on the Android OS don’t help, frankly), so show them that it’s not!

Apple say that the performance would suck on the lesser CPUs used on mobile devices, so lets see how well it performs!

Finally, there is the issue of battery life. Adobe say this would not be a problem, and Apple say it would. Show us!

Adobe: Please release a Flash Player for the iPhone and iPad OS, that can be installed on a jailbroken iPhone or iPad. Prove to us that what you are saying is true, and that Apple are telling lies for some evil purpose.

Just … prove it.

Show us.

As of yesterday evening (local time here), people in the US have been able to pre-order the iPad. Apparently.

The Apple Store worldwide was taken down for about an hour, and the only one that was reopened with the ability to pre-order the iPad was the US one.

And yet it seems like everyone is falling over themselves to shout about this like it’s the next great event! All the websites are proclaiming this new fantastic piece of news, shouting it from the rooftops!

But what does it really mean?

Nothing.

It means nothing has changed since the day before. The only difference is that the people who have a postal address in the US, and a US credit card, can now give money to Apple.

Well excuse me, but I could give them money right now if I wanted to: I could go to a local Apple retailer (we don’t have Apple stores here) and hand over some hard-earned cash … but the difference is that I would walk home with something I actually purchased!

So if I were in the US and had the requisite funds, would I pre-order an iPad? No. I don’t think it makes much sense to hand over money a month in advance of receiving something, when instead I could wait for the day it is actually released and then hand over the money and receive it in a couple of days. Or even go pick it up in the store.

The Global Village

But the thing that annoys me the most about this whole episode? Just imagine for a moment that you are the same person you are now, but that you are not in the US. And that you only have access to a “foreign” (which is what “local” means to you right now) online Apple Store. For the sake of argument, lets say that the “somewhere” is the UK or Australia, because culturally it’s not that much of a leap to imagine. And they don’t speak funny. Much.

We hear about globalisation, and how nowadays we all live in the “global village”. The earth is flat now, remember?

Well yeah – if you (like me) were an English speaker, who likes his tech news as much as the next man, and who has an interest in Apple products bordering on the unhealthy … you would be sitting there wondering why these people in a far-off land were getting so worked up about being able to pre-order an item that has been announced around the world, but can still only be pre-ordered in the US.

Worse than that – here in the unfashionable end of the global village we don’t even know how many of our Dollars, Pounds, Baht or Dong this thing is even going to cost. Or even when it will be available to buy.

So … to answer the question all the excitable Apple-chasing websites are asking: no. I am not particularly excited about the pre-order non-event, and no I did not pre-order one.