News 'Flash': Apple Is Still Smarter Than Everyone Else

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Knowing what a great sense of humor Apple's(AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs had, I'm thinking that he is somewhere in heaven shaking his head, arms folded with a smirk on his face. Apart from thinking he could have brought more innovation into heaven had he been consulted on its design, he is likely also looking down at the technology sector and wondering, "I've been gone almost a year and you guys have not been able to catch up."

Last week I started picturing Steve standing in front of some puffy cumulus clouds and scribbling the words "I told you so" after software giant Adobe's(ADBE) announcement that it plans to suspend its popular Flash player on Google's(GOOG) Android mobile devices effective Aug. 15.

What this means is that Adobe also will not be supporting the upcoming 4.1 Jelly Bean version of Android. I was not exactly sure how to receive this news. In fact I wasn't sure that it even qualified as news because it's been over two years since Steve Jobs told the world in an Apple narrative that this was coming.

On the release of the original iPad, Apple's rivals such as Research in Motion(RIMM) , Motorola(MMI) , Dell(DELL) and Samsung, as well as several other entries in the tablet market, used the fact that Apple opted out of using Flash as a selling point. They pointed out that the ubiquitous nature of Flash and the demands of various Web media would render the iPad a failure, particularly useless in the realm of video.

Well, not only are all of these rivals now looking up to the iPad in terms of sales, they also all look silly as they scramble to adopt HMTL5 -- the now-standard alternative to Flash of which Jobs was a huge supporter.

For Jobs, his chief concerns regarding integrating Flash into its iOS were centered around reliability, security and performance, as well as citing problems with battery life.