DISQUS

That's an odd comment coming from a developer, Dan. Whether the purchase is nagging or not is entirely up to how you implement it. And I don't see why in-app purchases can't be the perfect framework for software upgrades, and hence building the app's brand. Everything you wanted.

There was another announcement that will have, I predict, more impact on the New Mobile Economy than in-app purchases. That is the new ability for developers to communicate with peripheral devices, either through the Dock connector or through Bluetooth. This opens up a huge marketplace that hasn't existed til now and we'll start to see combined hardware/software solutions that haven't even been thought up yet.

Both Apple *and* Adobe have admitted that getting Flash to work on the (current) iPhone platform is technically tough, and this is clearly because of the large Flash resource requirement. The announcement that the full Flash client will be available in smartphones in 2010 tells me one thing only: that Adobe is expecting it will be able to deliver Flash on projected hardware available in a year's time. There will be some big steps in hardware and memory performance for all smartphones over the next 12 months (iPhone included) so we're not talking about current models.

Personally, I lament the pervasiveness of Flash on web sites when it's not necessary (notably, for simple navigation). Flash is not an open standard, and I hate the idea of the web being tied to proprietary formats.

As John Gruber eloquently points out, the fools should never have done it that way in the first place.