You can say that Flash is crappy, all right. But it certainty isn't a monopoly.

If someone is not satisfied with Flash, they can go ahead and build another Rich Internet Application Plaftorm, as Microsoft is doing with Silverlight and Sun is (was?) with JavaFX. So everyone can, in principle, have access to the part of the Web that Flash "conquered". It is hard, but possible.

Apple, on the other hand, is the one true gatekeeper that ultimately defines what runs in their systems. You can only have access to their platform by abiding to their terms. They are just impossible to bypass.