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Comment by dsplaisted | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't sound too plausible to me. It's only a revenue leak if the flash applications are going to stop people from paying money for Apps at the App store. But I think flash would mostly be used for free stuff, and would only really compete with the free Apps in the app store.

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You don't think apps from apple could contain flash? I think it is more of a video battle and a lock down on interface look and feel. If we remember, Apple played this closed market approach with the desktop and look where that got them. I would hate to see them make the same mistake a decade or two later.

"Apple played this closed market approach with the desktop and look where it got them:" It got them in the position of being the ONLY company making consumer computers that still has any margins to speak of. HP, Compaq, Dell, et al are all racing each other to the bottom, trying to eke out a minimal survival on razor-thin margins.

Apple's stumbles in the 80s and 90s weren't because they failed to license MacOS, it was because Jobs was immature and shot himself in the foot, taking his company down with him. These days they couldn't possibly be doing any better, and you can bet your ass Jobs still thinks licensing MacOSX is a terrible idea.

Apple lost plain and simple because they were closed market, some things never change. You can get an early lead like that but eventually open systems and open markets win out.

It is all in the numbers. Sure there is MUCH more mediocrity when you open it up, and you can control and only allow the best in a closed market. But in the end the percentage of better systems at the upper threshold of the open system will always beat the best hand picked companies that can participate. One big reason is competition, the other is greed and laziness that comes with that.

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