Adobe Strikes Back
In his open letter 'Thoughts on Flash,' Jobs pulled no punches when describing his feelings about Flash to anybody that would listen:"Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short. The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games. New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."Today, Adobe returned fire with an open letter of their own from the desks of the company's cofounders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock. Meeting Jobs blow for blow, the letter countered the Apple CEO's rhetoric and tagged his company with a few hits below the belt of their own:"We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs. No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web.We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web? And we believe the answer is: nobody — and everybody, but certainly not a single company."We're sure you'll agree that those are some harsh words coming from both sides of this quickly escalating quarrel. What does it all mean? We have no idea. There won't be much more to see than the same brand of chest thumping that's all ready come down the pike. Simply put, Apple and Adobe's long standing relationship has been very profitable for both parties. While there's plenty of smack talk floating around right now, the mighty dollar will most likely talk both corporations back down before anyone starts talking about drawn pistols at dawn.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/adobe_strikes_back
