Posted: 2010-05-05 15:29:20 UTC+02, Updated 2010-05-07 09:29:31 UTC+02.

Flash has taken a tough beating lately and finally, in particular from Apple who have worked hard to keep flash off it's popular devices.

I have previously written how flash is one of the fundamental web design errors, more than ten years after it's appearance on the web the plugin is still installed on more than 90% of all browsers despite the shortcomings, bugs, performance penalty and other problems.

Finally, the death stroke may be near, with more than a million non-flash enabled iPads sold in just a month, millions of iPhones and all major browsers to support HTML5, time's up. The only hindrance for flushing flash is the battle over standards. With three browsers supporting H.264, and two exclusively, it seems to be decided.

If your browser doesn't support HTML5, it's time to upgrade or you're up for a pretty boring web experience.

UPDATE: Adobe's CTO, Steve Lynch, hit back accusing Apple of playing a legal game rather than a technical game. According to Steve Lynch it's a question of developers' freedom of choice.

Steve Lynch goes on to complain that the different operating systems are the real hindrance for the future of the web when not all platforms can run the same code, making analogs to the first railways where rail width differed. In the move he completely forget that Flash is not an open standard, and developing on a closed platform is contrary to the interest of the user. Steve Lynce apparently has completely forgotten the end user in his argument for developer freedom.

Then Opera's Phillip Grønvold join the debate saying you can boil an egg on it when it's running, supporting Steve Jobs claim of poor perfomanceine.

This is probably not the end of the debate, Adobe will fight for flash. Meanwhile, I just hope developers will move swiftly towards the future of the free web and open standards.