I agree that Flash is better for many things, that the tools that support the format support greater capabilities, especially for things like access to webcam and mic hardware, and obviously 2D and extremely basic 3D interactive games and presentations, and Flash will likely be better for some or all of these things for a while longer. But I also think Flash is widely abused, with ads and other site elements doing things like playing videos or animations and consuming resources (precious on mobile devices) without user intervention, and worst of all designing entire site interfaces in Flash with no HTML fall-back. I support what Apple is doing because it really forces site operators to reevaluate how deeply they rely on Flash for their web presence, and because it drives the development of content creation tools that support HTML5 content, as well as progress in browser support. I acknowledge that it's painful to undertake a transition like this, especially as you've got clients asking why they have to pay this much more to get their content on iDevices now. But in the end, we get a more open web, which means more user control over the experience, which is a good thing for users like you and me.

To give a more practical example of the benefit to users of an open standard that browsers code to versus a proprietary plugin that a single vendor controls, I can point to the fine-grained control users have over javascript. Popup-blocking is now a standard feature for browsers, and most give users the option of controlling various other features which have been abused by web developers. The way this works is one browser will support the feature allowing users to limit javascript behavior, they start stealing marketshare from the others, and then the others are forced to adopt the capability to keep up. With proprietary browser plugins, however, the content is a black box handled entirely by the plugin runtime, over which the browser has little control. The user can customize what the plugin vendor says they can customize, and there is no drive to cater to users' needs instead of content partners, as all browsers must use the same implementation of the platform. Flash is all-or-nothing, and it's what Adobe wants it to be. Web standards are piecemeal, and they are whatever the user wants them to be.