There are plenty of reasons to keep Flash of those devices, but let's keep those aside for the moment; this particular point is simply more of a wake-up call to those who are lamenting its absence.

You're also talking to a fella that has Flashblock installed on all his browsers :)

But back to the particular point made in this post: ask yourself honestly... would the average consumer be more annoyed that Flash doesn't show up on the page at all, or that it does but that you can't interact with the bloody thing?

I dunno how much web work you've done, but I've been a (backend) web developer for thirteen years (yikes!) and this would be a huge issue for the majority of sites that I've worked on over those years.

And, frankly, if people have to reword their sites if they're interested in engaging the iP* audience, I'm beyond pleased that there's a whole swathe of folks that would be coerced into developing against open web standards, coz let's face it: unless you're a nerd like many of us on slashdot, you don't give a rat's ass about these concerns unless there's implications for your bottom line.

This finally provides a pragmatic reason for business owners and content publishers to get on the open standards bandwagon.

Well that's the fabulous part, isn't it? The individual ingredients are all out there... I mean, who can't get water, corn syrup, and the rest that's in coke? Moving away from crap like Coke and McDonald's, even the most exquisite pasta dishes start with eggs, flour, semolina, and a pinch of salt.

And that's UNIX's slot in the picture — the perfect base upon which to build towards excellence.

I would remind you that hardware is Apple's product; the software is just the "secret sauce" that pulls it all together.

McDonald's doesn't share what's in the Big Mac's sauce, Coca Cola doesn't share the recipe for Coke.

Besides, you can install Linux or Windows on your machine, if you so desire. I just don't think it's very fair to cry "foul" that they're not just giving away their secret sauce ('cause that worked so well for Sun...)

Aw, come on mr. coward – are you attempting to comparing sales volume of Mac-only era iPods against that of dual-platform iPods?

If you were to take the sales figures from this era as a percentage of the modern-day, you'd get a fraction so close to zero that statisticians relish describing as a "rounding error".

Your point attempts to account for historical knowledge, but dismisses pragmatic rationality.

Even assuming I agreed with you regarding whether or not Apple gave licensing a "real" chance (which I haven't yet decided, but leaning towards not), I don't see any compelling reason for them to roll the dice (again) on such an experiment, considering both their present commercial performance AND reported customer satisfaction.

But, for the sake of entertaining a thought: what specific choices on Apple's part regarding the handling of licensing Mac OS would have constituted giving it a "real" chance?