I realize responding to this is going back pretty fair considering the state of derailment here, but…
The thing is, you’re thinking of the iPad as a laptop replacement, which I’m not sure is the right way to go about it. It’s more of an item for passive consumption, not active stuff (passive being reading and/or watching, active being typing, photo editing, gaming). It’s splitting up your active stuff and passive stuff into two devices, the benefit being that you can accomplish your passive stuff in a more varied environment.
Well I am not sure the active/passive distinction makes much sense when something like reading the web can be quite interactive, e.g posting on a message board. In any case even on a purely consumption device I would want a USB port and an easy way to transfer photos or videos from other devices.
Ah! Actually, I think your understanding of Flash development in this sense is correct. I haven’t checked, but I haven’t heard anything to indicate that Adobe’s free tools allow you to go from AS3 -> iPad executable.
However, it looks like he’s attacking Flash in general rather than Flash cross-compiled to work on the iPad. Keep in mind that Adobe’s preferred solution would be to have the Flash player available for the iPhone and iPad so that consumers could run existing SWFs. And since SWFs can be created via a number of free tools, development would be open to a wider base of users.
His main point seems to be that the Flash player is closed, and that’s bad. While I would prefer an open-source alternative to the Flash player, it’s not as big a deal as he makes it out to be. He also completely disregards some of the open-source stuff Adobe does provides (such as the compiler in the Flex SDK) while talking up Apple’s open-source contributions.
He also treats Apple’s support of HTML5 as a grand and noble gesture. While open standards are generally a good thing, HTML5 is a little too open – it makes it trivial to take someone’s application, rip the entire contents, remove any revenue generation (ads, etc.), and host it on your own site. There’s big money in Flash (with game sponsorships easily hitting thousands of dollars), and it looks like Apple’s trying to squeeze that market out of the game under the guise of supporting open standards.
He also neglects to mention that while Apple’s development tools are free (with Mac ownership), there’s still a $100/year developer fee for actually doing iPhone/iPad development. Of course that would also apply to Flash developers who want to cross-compile to native code for the iPhone/iPad, so it’s a bit of a wash.