[inferiorhuman]

  "It was bad/slow/unstable" Sure, but that's irrelevant. 

No, it's pretty much the only thing that mattered. The iPhone wasn't the first smart phone, not by a long shot. It was the first smart phone that worked well enough for the masses. HTML5 video wasn't the first video framework either, it was the first that worked well enough for the masses. If Apple had thrown their weight behind flash, we wouldn't be having this conversation… because mobile would not be as popular. Users were not clamoring for another flash experience.

Sure, if literally everything were different flash could've been great. But that's not how life works. Sure, Adobe could've added a bunch of spit and polish (ignoring that flash was inherently bad for video), but they couldn't / didn't.

If flash were some sort of killer feature, surely Google could've doubled down on it and flown the "look how much better than Apple we are" flag. Or Palm, or Nokia, or Blackberry. Nobody defended flash because no users wanted it.

Adobe couldn't even get the desktop experience up to snuff, they had no chance with mobile. That is not and was not an Apple problem, that's an Adobe had an "awful product that nobody wanted to use on their hands" problem. Flash was as popular as it was because a.) that's all there was and b.) it allowed for abusive ads so adtech companies loved it.