Flash on the iPhone would be a blessing to Mac OS X.
Flash on a Mac has always been very troublesome. It was always slower and more crash prone than it’s Windows counterpart. I think this has to do with how Adobe builds it’s stuff for the Mac. Using less optimized code, more or less functional and whalla a Mac has Flash support. Recent releases have been better and better, but are still sub-par to Windows.
My guess is that Apple was never happy about how it was implemented and now they played hard to get with the iPhone. Adobe recently acknowledged that it was a bigger challenge than they expected and are working with Apple to get it done. If that’s true or not we’ll never know until it’s released.
Now if it’s true, it means Adobe has to go through the paces and the Apple QA. I think they will learn a thing or two on how to optimize code for Cocoa and Mac OS X in general. This would mean Adobe will start to create software that runs better and better.
Adobe is a well respected developer and they have great products, but developers also hate to change habits, like they skipped 64-bit support because Apple would not support it in parts of Carbon, or changed stuff that they did not expect. A big company and a big team can’t move that quickly but if they are determined to meet a goal, they will get there, eventually.
But the iPhone might move them to learn a few new tricks faster than they usually do.