Like the Roman Empire, Apple eventually should decline. That’s a pretty safe statement — whatever goes up, must come down. Apple is no exception. Apple may be at a peak, but they do not necessarily have to have a marked decline — many companies today (GE, IBM) have found their niche and continue to thrive by supplying what they are good at. One should also keep in mind that Apple has managed to hit several “peaks” over the past 10 years in widely different (but increasingly blurred) industries: music, mobile phones, and computers.
My main issue with Trip’s claims is the (now antiquated) claim that Apple’s lack of Flash support is going to contribute to the firm’s demise:
I think it would be an incredibly positive thing for the industry if Apple decided to support all of the web standards, because then Apple could be the best about everything. Right now they make a conscious choice. They want you to be in the App Store rather than the browser, so they cripple the browser.
It isn’t crippling the browser if not supporting Flash makes your experience better: leaving off Flash instantly provides better security, a smoother experience, and longer browsing capabilities. Until Flash fixes the general issues it has with mobility hardware, there is no reason to provide Flash support. Additionally, Apple has well over 300,000 apps that are natively written in Objective-C, so Flash (with all the problems associated with that technology) is not required. The difference in the experience of using an app written with Flash/AIR versus Objective-C is night and day.
It is hard to argue that missing Flash is hurting Apple, when it is because of this decision (and many others) that Apple hardware is preferred in both the tablet and mobile phone markets.