Happy Birthday To Steve Jobs’ Screed Against Flash

It was 15 years ago today that Apple boss Steve Jobs published a blog
post railing against Adobe Flash
<https://www.theverge.com/apple/657934/happy-birthday-to-steve-jobs-screed-against-flash>,
particularly about how it impinged on Apple’s control over its own
platform:

    If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries
    and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements
    if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We
    cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they
    will make our enhancements available to our developers.

In hindsight, we all know now about the problems with lack of open
standards, security and battery life. But as always, at the time,
there were those who played down these problems and who assumed that,
because Flash was so prevalent, it would remain so into the future.

There’s a lesson in there, about history repeating itself ...