> Apple was still selling the iPhone 3GS at the time, a device with 256Mb of RAM and a 600Mhz 32-bit processor.
That's a ton of ram. I recall spending a lot of time on flash websites in the early 2000s in college on the school issued laptop with maybe 64 mb of ram (and I think maybe pentium iii 650mhz so more cpu oomph)
Remember that iOS, unlike desktop operating systems, didn't have virtual memory and could only run one app at a time.
One app at a time means even less memory pressure. Plenty for flash!