Another flurry of “OMG, there’s still no Flash on the iPhone!” articles have appeared.  Wired Magazine talks at length about how it can’t be done without violating Apple’s terms of service:

Allowing Flash — which is a development platform of its own — would just be too dangerous for Apple, a company that enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it. Flash has evolved from being a mere animation player into a multimedia platform capable of running applications of its own. That means Flash would open a new door for application developers to get their software onto the iPhone: Just code them in Flash and put them on a web page. In so doing, Flash would divert business from the App Store, as well as enable publishers to distribute music, videos and movies that could compete with the iTunes Store.

Lots more blah, blah, blah.  Like this is news?  I explained all this months ago.  Why aren’t people talking about the obvious solution?

Of course Apple doesn’t want a Trojan Horse like Flash or anything similar to provide a back door so that you can get any app onto the iPhone just by clicking a web link.  DUH!

If that’s the problem, isn’t the answer easy?  Adobe needs to approach Apple with an offer that the Flash player will only accept signed Flash programs. This would be a useful capability for Flash anyway.  It can be made optional to the general population, but mandatory on the iPhone.  That way, Flash programs must have a certificate before iPhone will play them back.  All that certificate stuff can happen in the background very quickly and quietly.  We already use the technology all over the web anyway.  And why shouldn’t Apple be able to control what plays on the iPhone if they want to?

So now, as we’re blaming Apple for the lack of Flash, we need to ask ourselves where is Adobe in offering this kind of capability and compromise?  Why can’t that work and be done quickly and easily?