Om yea okay, because all of those other companies are putting out all those other so much better tablets running those better OS's. < /sarcasm >

Apple might not be the darling of geekdom anymore (something I don't think they every really aspired to), but the fact is, no other company would have produced anything close to the iPad, and as of today no other company has. To say that some other company and OS could have done this so much better is just simply ignoring reality and replacing it with some pseudo dogmatic wishful thinking.

1st - Apple doesn't have a Monopoly on anything (not even iPhone/iPad applications since you can create some pretty significantly cool apps using HTML5 and WebKit JS system hooks and just through up a web page).
2nd - It could be much easier to argue the Flash has a Monopoly on RIA than Apple has on anything.
3rd - Comparing consumer electronic devices to computers is not a valid comparison.

Here's where Adobe looses:
1. They are only suing Apple, not every other CES device that doesn't support Flash (Where's the suit against Nintendo who have even more restrictive development requirements? What about Sony?) So the question is raised, why is Adobe only targeting Apple? This is something Adobe doesn't want to answer.
2. As stated Apple is nowhere near a monopoly... there is tons of competition (Blackberry has a higher market share already. Android is growing fastest, WinMo 7 is on it's way, eventually Nokia (the #1 mobile phone company BTW will need to do something)... not even close.
3. Apple could easily state it has a legal obligation to it's shareholders *not* to support Flash since that would cede control of it's own product to a third party, while at the same time creating an impediment to future innovations (and this is a very strong argument and in itself is likely enough to stop and legal action in its tracks).

Oh here's the kicker... Apple doesn't need to sign it's own agreement, and can selectively enforce it with 3rd parties, so it's possible this is clearly defensive and Apple has 3.3.1 to protect itself so when Apple upgrades the iPhone OS and all the Flash (other interpretive frameworks) generated stuff breaks Apple can just point and say "hey... their fault, not only does there crap suck, but they violated their agreement with us, can't sue us we're covered, not only that but now we have to sue the developer so we can refund all our consumers that bought their crappy app that no longer works since they didn't follow our rules"

...because every time something microsoft/apple is better than apple/microsoft there must either be some bias or fanboisim, because everyone knows that microsoft/apple is always best at everything.

Hardware acceleration (and dedicated hardware in general) is much more efficient (and for manufacturers, much less expensive) then general purpose processing. So while your computer may have a processor that can handle this, many smaller consumer devices don't... additionally, for portable content you need energy efficiency... how long would you computer processor run on a cell phone battery? Also... hardware acceleration isn't just for play back. It's also for video creation/production. Many pro video systems take raw video and encode it to h.264 on the fly in real time (For SD/HD streaming and well as broadcast distribution). And then there's other studio productions where hardware acceleration allows working with real time effects... etc. The reality is that playback is a very small part of the puzzle... If you want to push Ogg-Theroa as a standard then you need the product creators to use this, and... there is no compelling reason to do so. I support much Open-Source software (both with my time & contributions and direct financial support)... that said, in the real world you pick the best solution for the problem, and in this case Ogg-Theroa is not it. And this is no disrespect to the development of this... this is hard stuff to do and it's really incredible that Ogg-Theora is where it is today, unfortunately it falls short of h.264. Also... pushing an inferior standard down the throats of a web viewing public, isn't going to win the open source model any friends.

I'm so sick of that argument... "Well just wait... Ogg-Theora will get so much better in the future"... Guess what... h.264 also exist in the that timeline and encoders will improve, hardware acceleration will improve, and by the time OT is where h.264 is today (and it has a long way to go with higher bit rate content), there will be even more reasons to use h.264.

First of all this is a beta product that isn't shipping on anything and while it's trendy to think beta software is fully functional (Thanks Google) with Apple, beta generally means, "really this isn't finished, there's still stuff that's messed up here." (In fact this would apply to most Apple .00 products as well, which is fine since historically .1 or .01 is rolls a few weeks after the initial release.) In other words, stuff like this is to be expected.

Second, Safari has for the longest time provided this very nifty "Private Browsing" which will eliminate all of these issues.

Finally, if you dig in the preferences you can turn a bunch of this stuff off if it bothers you so much. Still feed the fire of Mac hate... whatever.

Use Word...

...or if you have some strange issues with Microsoft, or don't have access to a native version of Word, Open Office will work. Word is actually quite good at this sort of stuff, plus this will give you the most flexibility in the long run (at least as far as publishers go). The exception is if you are self publishing or handling copy edit/tech edit/ and layout yourself. See the problem with other tools is that you will find that most production people (including copy/development/ and many tech editors) are trained to use Word, and using something else will a create huge workflow issues and may require some sacrifices in the production process, resulting in an overall negative effect on both the timeliness, editorial effectiveness, and cost of producing your book.

Now many publishers are at least considering the use of docbook or a similar XML type format (since often most books end up in XML for easy output to various print and online mediums), but for now it's just not an ideal format either since the tools haven't evolved to be that useable for many editors. See the thing is, I assume you want a well trained copy editor and such, and many copy editors, are good at language, not technology, so they just don't work well with LyTeX or XML or whatever.

Now again... if you are self publishing, do whatever you want. Otherwise if you don't use Word (or something Word compatible) you will be limiting your publishing options significantly. (BTW unless you are self publishing, InDesign is a terrible option... it's a layout program not a writing tool, and many publishers still use Quark, or some other layout tools.)