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Though it is pretty awful in this day and age, almost 30 years after the C64...

You do know that the C64 has been 100% emulated in Flash don't you? Let me know when HTML5 can do that and I'll consider switching over from my "inferior" platform.

The thing about Flash though is there are some people who have stuck with it and made some really cool tools/products/games with it (everything from C64 emulators to word processors not to mention tons of games - some of which are quite complex) using a serious dev toolkit like Flash Builder.

Hopefully this kind of tool inspires someone to dig deeper and pick something up something a bit deeper like the Android SDK

Html-5 is really a convenient scapegoat - if it wasn't that it would be something else, and its not battery life or stability - I think more than one person has put down that myth. The reality is developing applications on html-5 is tricky business still because its still in development, but I'm sure it will get much easier once developer tools arrive and standards are more firmly set.

The reality here is that Flash, like Java would create an end run around the app-store immediately (and their revenue sharing scheme with developers) - that's it. Flash is actually being used to develop a lot of the same applications that Java has been used for. Its not the best platform to design programs in for sure, but I've seen word processors and video editing tools written in Flash. The tools exist right now to develop pretty much anything you want.

That C64 emulator that got denied a while back? Easy solution - port it to Flash and distribute it that way. Same with most any other denied app.

Plus you could use the Flash C compiler to port just about anything to the iPhone if they let Flash on board - including their own app store.

Last but not least since Apple controls their html5 implementation - maybe they could restrict it so that it wouldn't compete with the app-store. I wouldn't hold that out just yet.

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out. When Android phones are running the best of the web on html-5, Flash and Java - what then Apple?

The iPhone might have hardware 3D graphics, but only the C64 had hardware sprites.

This Flash C64 emulator is pretty nifty. It still needs some work though. I guess the iPhone doesn't support flash, but other phones might be able to run it.

If you want to run a little C64 basic on that emulator, be aware that the key for the double quote character is SHIFT-2. (I can't believe I remembered that!)

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

I am not a flash expert, but actually you can do pretty amazing stuff with flash, like this C-64 emulator: http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/

But still, based on my (mostly theoretical) knowledge, the security of a flash application is just a little bit higher than a security of a javascript application, because it's just a matter of running a decompiler to get the code.

http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/
http://osflash.org/fc64/

Check out FC64 - A Commodore 64 Emulator for Flash Player 9.

http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/

Actually saying it is not an API is like saying it cannot be done. Fact is you can develop nearly any app you like in Flex using the Flash API's.

One of my favorite apps is an email client running ontop of jboss. My next favorite is a C64 emulator. Check it out > http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/ (note: it does require flash player 9)