You’ll be hard pressed to find a bigger Apple advocate than me. I know they’re out there, but they don’t get out much. So, when I dog Apple, you can bet I feel strongly about it.

In a conversation with Teresa Boardman, a Realtor® from St Paul, Minnesota, she stated very strongly, “unless the iPhone will let me access the internet via my computer, like my phone does, I’m never going to switch.” I know this is anecdotal, but when she said it my brain said, “She’s right. The iPhone should enable this.” At the time, only days after the iPhone launch, I figured someone would write an app and that would be that. And someone did.

Apparently that is not that. Apple and AT&T continue to march toward taking more and more control over the applications and services that are allowed on the iPhone. Some of that control is certainly necessary to prevent malware and other “bad stuff” from happening. But preventing truly beneficial apps from making their way onto the iPhone, while allowing dozens of ridiculous “tip calculators” to thrive, is further indication that Apple still doesn’t want to understand the needs of the business user.

It’s not like they couldn’t make money from it. I, for example, would gladly pay a bit more on the data plan to not have to have tote around the wireless card for my laptop. I can’t be alone.

My bet is that this controlling trend will continue. And that should further the Jailbreaking movement. But with iPhone production ramped to 800,000 units per week, the number of users who will opt out as a result of these shortcomings won’t even amount to a speed bump in their sales chart.

This makes no sense to me. But hey, what do I know, I think having a Flash plugin for Safari on the iPhone is a good idea too. Clearly I’m wrong.

This just pisses me off. That's all I have to say about that.  

But I’ve said from the beginning that the fact it does not support an Adobe Flash plug-in is a bad decision. And it was clearly a conscious decision by Steve and his crew. Now, after a visit to a local Starbucks this evening, I can only conclude that it’s also an insane decision.

I’ve been wanting to see how Starbucks was executing their Hear Music/iTunes campaign, so I decided to just sit outside a local Starbucks for a second and log into my T-Mobile account to see it for myself.

It’s been a while since I spent any time at a Starbucks, so the screen that popped up when I fired up Safari on my iPhone was new. And it gave me options to browse around without logging into my T-Mobile account. Very cool. But right there on the front page, taking up the largest amount of real estate, was a large Hear Music/iTunes square. So I clicked on it.

The image above is the screen I received. Are you kidding me? Apple initiates a major deal with Starbucks and Hear Music, then coordinates it with the launch of the new iTunes WiFi Store and one of the first things they hit you with is a reminder of how lame it is that the iPhone doesn’t support Flash?

Come on, Steve, work out the deal with Adobe, put aside your world domination plans for a bit and let’s get this insanity behind us.