War of words develops between Adobe and Apple
Monday 17 May 2010 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter
The gloves are off in the skirmish between Adobe and Apple. Last month's 'Thoughts on Flash' tirade against Adobe's beloved product by Apple CEO Steve Jobs has prompted an aggressive response from Adobe.
The company's Chairmen and Co-Founders, Chuck Geschke and John Warnock, have written an open letter countering Jobs' arguments and on Thursday Adobe launched a digital and print advertising campaign promoting the company as an advocate of digital freedom. Many commentators, however, are saying that Jobs is right: Adobe is not an open platform. As the digital marketing and ecommerce site Econsultancy puts it, "This could be a hard sell."
image courtesy of Adobe
The long-running spat between Apple and Adobe seems to be escalating to open war ¬- of words, at least. It's not surprising really, as Steve Jobs' anti-Flash article was damning. He criticised Flash on many levels and defended Apple's decision not to allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads - which Adobe has argued is a move purely to protect Apple's App Store. Jobs argues, however, that the decision is based on "technology issues", which he goes on to list in great detail. He dismisses Adobe's claims that Apple is a closed system and that Flash is open, saying that in fact the opposite is true:
"While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system. Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - all open standards."
Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access the full web because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. Jobs counters this by stating that almost all this video content is also available in a more modern format, H.264, making it viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.
Jobs goes on to criticise Flash in terms of reliability, security and performance on the Mac platform and on mobile devices, arguing that Adobe has been very slow in addressing these issues. He then points out the negative impact of Flash on battery life and the fact that it was not designed for Touch products but rather mouse-driven PCs.
Finally, he turns his attention to Adobe's desire for developers to adopt Flash to create apps to run on Apple's mobile devices:
"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."
Jobs tries to take a hammer to a nail in Adobe's coffin with his final remarks:
"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."
What Jobs doesn't quote in his 'Thoughts on Flash' are the current statistics on usage. 85% of the top 100 websites use Flash (according to Alexa), 75% of web video is viewed using Flash and 3.5 million developers use the Flash platform.
In their riposte, Adobe's Geschke and Warnock say:
"As the founders of Adobe, we believe open markets are in the best interest of developers, content owners, and consumers. Freedom of choice on the web has unleashed an explosion of content and transformed how we work, learn, communicate, and, ultimately, express ourselves. If the web fragments into closed systems, if companies put content and applications behind walls, some indeed may thrive - but their success will come at the expense of the very creativity and innovation that has made the Internet a revolutionary force."
Adobe - Setting the record straight
image courtesy of Adobe
The problem for Adobe is that the company has not helped itself in recent years by being far too slow to address the drawbacks of Flash - its propensity to gobble memory and its tendency to accommodate numerous bugs. Many tech-heads are taking Apple's side on this one. The electronics web magazine Engadget even cheekily suggested that Adobe might have to translate its ads into HTML5 for anyone to notice them!
Industry pundits are eagerly awaiting the launch of Flash 10.1, Adobe's mobile release, which is supposed to address some of the issues that Steve Jobs has highlighted. Only time will tell.
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