Apple has decreed that Flash must die and developers everywhere have shown up with shovels to dig its grave. Now, I’m no dear friend of Flash and I think the energy that is being poured into improving HTML5 on account of its future demise is wonderful for the web. But that doesn’t make me feel any better about Apple’s demonstration of might.

Today we cheer because Flash is every Real Web Developer™’s favorite piñata and what’s more fun than seeing a giant bat it around. It of course doesn’t help that Adobe is a big, stodgy software company with plenty of dysfunctional products. They play the role of a sympathetic victim poorly.

My fear is that Apple will take the expedited death of Flash as an invitation to play king maker with increased abandon. Apple is fighting everyone on all fronts. They’re on the outs with Sony, Google, Motorola, Microsoft, and an endless list of other companies. What technology or technique is next on the hit list? (Think what happened or didn’t to Blue-ray, USB3, Java).

The fact that this is just a general sense of unease about what Apple-the-superpower might do next is exactly why this is so harmful. Once you start flexing your muscles, everyone will be fearing they’re next.