The 'halo effect' theory may actually play well here, especially if apple is smart enough to keep flash off the iPhone (shows how stable the OS/Apple experience is). The number of RIMM, etc. switchers prolly won't prove very high to start, though.

However, his "may do little to change smartphone market..." comment? Hello? Anyone home? The iPhone's emergence was enough to inject thousands of new users into the smartphone market. All of those savvy consumers who wanted to carry around just one device for their media and wireless connectivity bought into the iPhone. These are the folks that previously would have had a general cell phone and iPod.

The iPhone has ALREADY reshaped the size and nature of the smartphone market, and it's been out for less than a year and still hasn't gone through the first major (and important) revision. If you thought business users were whiny about push email, wait until consumers get used to it. *shudders*

The 'halo effect' theory may actually play well here, especially if apple is smart enough to keep flash off the iPhone (shows how stable the OS/Apple experience is). The number of RIMM, etc. switchers prolly won't prove very high to start, though.

Sorry, but keeping Flash off the iPhone doesn't show how stable the platform is (not sure what the h*** "stable the experience is" means). Everyone says that Flash is useless for so much can be done with AJAX, which means you can clutter up the interface just as well as you can with Flash.

[i]Sorry, but keeping Flash off the iPhone doesn't show how stable the platform is[/i]

It most certainly does!! it shows how stable the platform can be... without flash! :)

i think that dan was trying to say that Apple is controlling the development of apps on the iphone. we have those apps that run within safari and those that will be based on cocoa.

i guess there is some fear that flash as a dev platform could introduce instablility and loosen apple's control of the device. though, i've no idea on how legitimate that concern is.

imo, the iphone's initial impact will be on the small business and home business users. some larger companies will follow suit as their business requirements are met.

microsoft stands to make a killing off office for macos x lite. the question being, will they bring it to the platform or leverage it as a differentiator for Win Mobile?

Flash is a CPU and memory pig - there's good reason to keep it off the iPhone that has nothing to do with fouling up the interface with AJAX.

Bad UI takes care of itself. CPU and memory utilization needs to be addressed by Adobe.

But if all it takes is Flash to make a platform unstable, it basically means there's something unstable about the platform as a whole. No one piece of software should break a system.

1. What Flash content are you currently consuming?

2. Of the above what is absolutely critical to you (can't live without)?