Apple vs Adobe
Adobe and Apple are in the middle of a PR skirmish that is starting to heat up. Although his displeasure with Flash has been hinted at for some time, in April Steve Jobs finally trashed Adobe and Flash publically in an open letter. Jobs states that Flash did well during the “PC era” but we are now in the “mobile era” with low power devices and touch interfaces that don’t work with Flash. Also, and most importantly, Flash is a closed system and does not support open web standards. This is no surprise that Jobs would not support Flash because most of the portable products he sells do not support it either.
I understand why many developers try to steer away from Flash; it requires more system resources slowing down the system and is not supported by the W3C. However, it gives developers more options and is very widely used across the Internet, mostly for video and interactive content.
Adobe has responded to Jobs’s Flash bashing with an interesting strategy, to kill the opposition with kindness. In their own open letter, they started an opposing campaign based on Love of all things. They have also followed up with an ad in the Business section of the LATimes with the copy:
We love creativity
We love innovation
We love apps
We love the web
We love Flash
We love our 3 million developers
We love healthy competition
We love touch screens
We love our Open Screen Project partners
We love HTML5
We love authoring code only once
We love all devices
We love all platforms
What we don’t love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web
Adobe has cleverly fired back at Jobs pointing out the hypocrisy of his claims. Jobs fully supports open web standards as long as they only apply to his competitors and not his own software platform. He claims that he does not support Flash because he refuses to put his products at the mercy of a third party but that is exactly what Apple demands of its iPhone app developers. He is accusing Adobe of the exact same things Apple is guilty of. This is why I feel that open web standards is not the issue at all; I believe the main reason Jobs does not support Flash is because it enables free streaming video and games online. If Apple products supported Flash on their portable devices, people would have access to media without having to spend money in the App store and iTunes store. Many of Jobs’s negative claims about Flash in his open letter are blown out of proportion or completely unfounded (see security and battery-life for example). And while is true that HTML5 is the future and will likely replace Flash in most applications, its still in its infancy and it is very unlikely it will be recommended as standard for at least another few years, until then Flash is still completely necessary. The fact is that Apple would have to compete with Flash enabled media on its devices and Jobs does not want the competition, this is not about open web standards and healthy competition, it is the opposite of that. In a perfect world, users could decide whether or not they want to use flash on their portable devices similar to how we can on computers.
While I am impressed by Adobe’s clever response and resulting campaign, I feel that this escalating feud between the companies is completely unnecessary and both sides will lose in the long run. Apple and Adobe have had a long-standing relationship that has greatly benefited both parties. At Chado, we love both brands and use Adobe software on Apple products everyday. Both companies are firmly grounded in creative industries and both can attribute their initial successes to their products being used together in this industry. In fact, the only reason I use a MacBook is because how well it supports Adobe products. Whether they like it or not, both companies are dependent upon each other to some degree; without Adobe’s superior creative products there would be very little demand for professional Mac hardware. Also, Apple would not be the brand it is today without the praise and exposure it received from creative professionals. With the growing popularity of their portable devices, Apple seems to have lost focus on where they came from and what their true strengths are. If this battle continues there will be no winner. Both companies would greatly benefit if they continued to work together as allies rather than going on the offensive as enemies.
Tags: Adobe, adobe flash, adobe open letter, app store, apple, apple open letter, Chuck Geschke, creative, flash, greed, html5, ipad, iphone, John Warnock, open web standards, platforms, rant, steve jobs, tweet, W3C
