[Artwork by DYLAN ROSCOVER]
NEWSWEEK: Apple does not explain its strategy. But my interpretation of what it’s thinking goes as follows: The first two decades of the World Wide Web have been a huge mistake. The Internet is not a philosophy. It’s a distribution mechanism. The laws of physics did not change when the airplane was invented, nor have the laws of economics changed because the Internet exists. You make money on the Internet the same way you do everywhere else—by having something that people want and forcing them to pay for it. There is a reason a circus takes place inside a tent, and it’s not to keep you dry when it rains. They want to charge you to watch the big show. Part of me is glad Apple is doing this, because someone needs to buck the “everything is free” trend and see what happens. But I think the company is taking things to an extreme, exerting a degree of control that may ultimately undermine its own success. If you own an iPad or an iPhone, you’re aware (and no doubt frustrated) that it won’t run videos created in Adobe’s Flash software, which accounts for half or more of all the videos on the Web. An Apple spokesman says Flash is “closed and proprietary” and that Apple supports other development tools that are “open and standard.” But banning Flash also pushes customers to buy movies and TV shows from iTunes rather than watch them on a free Web site. It pushes developers to write apps that get distributed through Apple’s App Store, rather than through a Web browser. The company is taking a similarly hard-nosed approach with the iAd system it will launch this summer. […] It’s one thing for Apple to pull stuff like this with a mobile phone. But the iPad is pitched as a replacement for your regular laptop. Future versions will be even more capable. Basically, Apple is reinventing the personal computer, 
supplanting the current way of doing things with a business model in which Apple controls everything and everyone—customers, developers, advertisers. MORE
STEVE JOBS: I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain. MORE
MASHABLE: In an interview with The New York Times, Google’s Andy Rubin revealed that the upcoming version of the Android mobile operating system will fully support Flash technology. Code named Froyo, Adobe showed us Android 2.2 with Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One last month.According to Rubin, Google’s definition of openness “means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying.” MORE
RELATED: San Mateo County prosecutors are defending the search of a Gizmodo.com editor’s home and seizure of his computers that were part of a criminal investigation into an iPhone prototype lost by an Apple employee. Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney, told CNET on Tuesday 
evening that prosecutors had considered whether reporter shield laws applied to the search and seizure aimed at the gadget blog–and decided to proceed after carefully reviewing the rules. “My prosecutor who is handling it considered this issue right off the bat when it was being brought into him and had some good reasons why he and the judge felt the warrant was properly issued,” Wagstaffe said. Gizmodo’s parent company, Gawker Media, has said that the search warrant is “invalid,” citing a California law curbing newsroom searches. So has the Electronic Frontier Foundation. On the other hand, if Gizmodo employees are targets of the criminal investigation themselves, it’s likely that the law’s protections do not apply. MORE
