Steve Jobs lands finishing blow to Adobe controversy
Friday, 30 April 2010, 15:23 IST   |    1 Comments
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Steve Jobs lands finishing blow to Adobe controversy
Bangalore: The Apple, Adobe controversy has been going on since a long time. But now Apple has come out with a rare open letter, where Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has detailed the technological reasons behind his company's refusal to let Adobe Systems' Flash Player onto the iPhone. "Flash was created during the PC era--for PCs and mice. 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." Jobs said in the letter, according to CNET. Jobs also knocked Flash for being proprietary, sapping battery power, not supporting multitouch interfaces, posing security risks, and being unstable. "Flash is the No. 1 reason Macs crash," Jobs said. Overall, his message is this: Flash is flawed, Apple doesn't need it, and the company is using its considerable power and influence to make it obsolete. "We know from painful experience that letting a third-party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in substandard apps, and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third-party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features," Jobs said. "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers." Adobe is now tired of all the allegations and has finally decided to shift the focus away from Apple. "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," Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch wrote in a company blog post recently. "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 devices for both Flash Player and AIR."

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