Yesterday I wrote about an open letter from Steve Jobs detailing his reasons for not allowing Adobe’s Flash player software on the iPad or iPhone. Today the war of words heated up as Adobe’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Lynch, has responded to Job’s attack.
Clearly, a lot of people are passionate about both Apple and Adobe and our technologies. We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
However, as we posted last week, given the legal terms Apple has imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others.
We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.
Clearly this nasty affair has rattled Adobe’s cage, and it’s reasonable that they should be angry. There is, let’s face it, no reason why Apple should deny their millions of users the choice, and let’s not forget it is a choice, to install the Flash player should they want to. If it then doesn’t work properly then it’s the user who is at fault for installing it.
The problem is that Apple don’t see it that way. They’re convinced that Adobe has written some bad software that won’t run properly on their hardware, and it’s possible that they’re right. Even so though it’s not up to Apple to be so protectionist about their platforms for the sake of “quality”.
Adobe will now be shifting their focus onto other mobile platforms, all of which are up and coming, and I’ve heard a great many iPhone users who will seriously think about switching away from the phone now this news is out. They simply like using websites such as YouTube too much.
Ultimately the loser in this is the consumer. There’s still plenty of choice but not, sadly, for the people who have already invested their hard-earned cash in an iPhone or iPad. Steve Jobs, and I don’t say this lightly, needs to grow up a bit and realise that alienating his customers in this aggressive manner won’t win his company any fans.
Written by : Mike Halsey www.connectedinternet.co.uk
Source : Adobe
