In the two and a half years since the the release of the iPhone, Apple (at times with the help of AT&T) has addressed many of the complaints leveraged against the phone like lack of MMS, VOIP over 3G, true GPS, and Microsoft Exchange support. There are still lots of big complaints however, and one of the biggest out there is lack of Flash support. Fuel has been added to the fire lately as the most recent versions of Android phones support flash in their browsers, and the glaring omission of Flash while Steve Jobs demoed the the soon to be released iPad.

There’s tons of speculation as to why Apple refuses to support Flash. Apple’s official stance is Flash’s poor performance on mobile devices. This claim seems to be supported by Mozilla considering they recently pulled Flash support from their first mobile browser. Others would argue, however, that Flash threatens Apple’s ability to control the iphone / ipad environment through its AppStore (and of course it’s potential revenue stream).

While it’s fun to play the speculation game, at the end of the day, the bottom line (to me at least) is the user experience – i.e. my experience. Do I feel like I’m missing out on my iphone by not having flash? Nine times out of ten, the answer is “No.” Let me explain that answer before I get flamed into oblivion.

1. Most of the websites I visit have adapted to the iphone not having Flash. Many of them have an app that formats their content for the iPhone. Many other sites that I frequent often like Cnet.com or Gamespot have mobile versions of their sites that allow me to play their videos on my phone – with that said, I don’t often watch video on my phone while out and about… and if I’m home, I prefer to watch on a bigger screen than my phone. Does it suck for websites out there, that they have to versions of their websites for specific devices… yeah, kinda… but again, the bottom line is what’s my (your) experience as the user.
2. There are some fun and cool Flash based games out there – many of them quite popular on facebook. While I can’t play every single flash based game out there, many have been adapted for the iphone or there are apps available with similar gameplay (many of them free). I generally don’t have much time to play games on my iPhone, but I feel there’s tons of entertainment options for me when I do have a bit of spare time.
3. Flash based ads – don’t miss them for one second… no-brainer
4. If a site uses flash extensively, and it’s a site that I like or need, I just don’t visit it on my iPhone. This might sound like a bit of a cop-out, but it is what it is… For example, I don’t check google analytics on my iPhone because the graphs don’t show up. I wait till I’m home and in front of my desktop to check my site stats. It’s not the end of the world for me to have to wait.

So over all, lack of Flash support on the iPhone is at best a minor annoyance for me, and far from a deal breaker. At the same time, I realize there are lots of people out there that use their phones differently that I do. Do you feel you need Flash on your mobile device?

Graphs don't show up on google analytics - I assume it's because of no flash support.