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Poor performance on Mac was also an issue. Web browsers on the Mac were held back by the fact that Adobes plugin was extremely slow on the Mac, and Adobe didn't care. Apple could write the fastest web browser in the world, but it wouldn't matter if Flash on the Mac had only a fraction of the performance of the Windows version.

It was a very smart move to not enable that dependency on the iPhone.

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I think his hands were somewhat tied on the iPhone honestly - flash apps were borderline unusable on the flagship Android headsets of the day. You had to install an alternate browser, the apps were designed for mouse-keyboard input rather than touchscreens, they were non-responsive, they lagged with the Qualcomm chips, and they absolutely ravaged your battery.

It's no wonder Steve Jobs just decided not to straight up not the tech. The security concerns were just a convenient scapegoat.

Ironically, that fastest web browser engine now determines the fates of apps on Apple's platform. At least, it prevents the building of alternative browsers like an iOS Firefox Gecko browser.

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