That wasn't Jobs' argument. Jobs said a deployment of Flash without hardware acceleration quickly drains the battery.
Fine. Let the user decide whether or not to install a Flash player. Leave it uninstalled by default, but let users who know enough to go hunt it down to balance their battery with their web needs. Let them turn it off when they don't want to use it.
Turning flash off isn't that trivial even on the desktop. Making that possible on a mobile device is just that much more complicated. Better to just have it off by default and use the html 5 standard better for users, better for device manufactures, better for openness, the only one hurt here is Adobe.
He also said that Flash was designed for browser plus mouse.
So was the whole web. That argument applies to html as much as Flash. The argument fails.
Kinda true, but html is an open standard that can be changed and adapted. Apple has the ability to work through the standards body to make that happen which again helps everybody.
And he said that Apple believes that when developers arrive at a platform through cross-platform tools, customers get least common denominator functionality.
What?! Again, using Safari on the iPhone to view html from the web is exactly the same degree of "cross platform" as using an iPhone Flash viewer to view Flash content. The least common denominator functionality point applies equally. Again, the argument fails.
Again kinda true html, css and javascript while standard are also extensible and degrade nicely if a tag is not supported. This is part of the spec. So Apple can and does offer webkit specific css tags that can be tied directly into OSX or iPhoneOS features. These tags and functions are open source and be implemented by anyone. So in general this is true but not always.
Jobs did say, as a counter to Adobe's assertion that Flash was a standard, that HTML5, javascript, and CSS are standards, Flash is proprietary.Seems about right to me. Now we know Jobs is not concerned with customer freedom on the mobile devices because Apple's bread is buttered when it delivers simple consistent devices that are easy to operate and which do what they say they will.
Customers who prefer to exercise their freedom to tinker have other devices to choose from. That looks to me an excellent environment for maximum customer satisfaction.
It may be fair to say the EFF is using this as an opportunity to take some of spotlight, while the tech world is focused on these parties. That's fine, I believe in the EFF's fundamental philosophies and do not want GNU/GPL tools to disappear or be co-opted. I think it is a bit misguided and counter-productive to insist that everyone march to the same drummer.
And yet Apple insists that all iPhone users march to the same drummer. Maybe that's misguided and counter-productive, too. You're right that there are other devices to choose from, and Apple has the right to make a bad device if they so choose. But for those of us who are techies, for instance, everyone on Slashdot, doesn't this completely demolish the appeal of the iPhone? We can have a much more powerful, open experience with Android, for instance. We'll be able to choose whether or not to use Flash in Android 2.2, and we can choose to leave it off to save the battery 90% of the time but turn it on occasionally to fill out that dumb Flash form or see a stupid animation that really shouldn't be in Flash but is. Flexibility is a good thing, and in this case there's no reason giving the simple option of installing Flash would hurt users. Why must the users be protected from themselves?
I agree with you, Apple knows their market and techies are not the main focus. The focus in the 90% case the general user who doesn't want the computer getting in the way of their work or play. Removing flash or not providing an on/off isn't simply a matter of protection, its more a matter of simplification why add an on/off switch when 90% of the user base doesn't know it does, when to use it, or why its there. Just turn it off and move the technology forward. HTML 5 is the future and its a future we should all get behind. Technology that has out lived its usefulness needs to be abandoned to rot.
One failed assumption here is that you'll have an on/off switch for flash in Android.