Doug they probably said the same thing about digital media. Methods of delivering content will never change if we don't have devices driving it.
Flash, as a way of delivering content, is complete crap. I'm sure HTML5 will have ways of delivering slide shows, sure you'll have to update your gallery software, but that's hardly a reason for us to stand still and carry on using inferior software.
Flash was probably impressive when people were still surfing from a terminal using lynx, but it just doesn't cut it anymore and we need a few people to say "know what, it's about time we dropped it as a format. We aren't going to support it on our devices". You'd be amazed how quickly HTML5 got off the ground if a few more hardware providers done this.
What I think that you and many, many others aren't getting, is that people like me are not against Flash disappearing and being taken over by HTML5. However... it can not happen over night like we'd hope for it to. Yet, the move of cutting off one's nose to spite its face, has been an age old lesson which you'd think the likes of a smart man like Job's would come to terms with. Another however.... The real problem here, is that Jobs isn't actually cutting off much of his nose because his loyal followers will eat anything Apple serves at the dinner table, regardless of whether or not a main course is missing from the feast.
When major corporations and companies aren't playing in the same ballpark as Apple is *for whatever reason's they may have*, it's pretty logical that these guys don't care a bit about the common good of the consumer *that goes for Apple and the rest of em'*, but would rather keep on waging their own personal wars until the funding for all of the ad hype runs out, or until we're so inundated with it that we no longer care or just spend our money on which ever technology is already ahead of the game.
I understand the strategy behind what Stevie is doing, but I don't agree with the tactics he's using to pull them off, at all. Why not just allow currently working technology exist on your platform UNTIL HTML 5 gains a much larger foot hold in the market ?
I do not believe for one second that the prevalence and success of HTML 5 depends upon how soon everybody will STOP using Flash. Let's say that everybody decided to just stop using Flash. Ok... great. But now what ? There aren't enough HTML 5 engineers/coders and content to fill in the now empty gap. None of the major browsers (setting Safari aside) are on board with HTML 5, either. So please tell me what the point is then ? You can't just say.. "the sooner people stop using Flash, the sooner HTML 5 will replace it", because that is an totally untrue statement.
If it was possible, we likely wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm all for the death of Flash, but again.... not at the cost of not having a readily available replacement from every aspect that it's needed.
Doug