Apple vs. Flash gets even hotter
With public messages flying in all directions, the Apple vs. Adobe Flash issue continues to heat up. Now we have some reasons for it all, and it seems less likely than ever that the two will ever kiss and make up.
For one thing, Steve Jobs is being more specific about the things he does not like, which is a bit more coherent and logical than just calling Adobe names. In an open letter, Jobs has now written, “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.” In essence, he called Flash proprietary, a battery hog and ill-suited for modern mobile devices, according to an SFGgate story.
As to why he has banned Flash from the iPhone, along with other third-party developer tools, Jobs says, “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. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.” That, too makes more sense out of the Apple objections to Flash.
Understandably, Adobe is not happy with this line of reasoning. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has refuted the claims made by Jobs several times, most recently in a Wall Street Journal interview, saying that “for every one of these accusations made there is proprietary lock-in.” He probably has a point, but for either of these companies to makes claims against the other on the basis of proprietary software and behavior seems ridiculous in the extreme. If one just added IBM to the mix, the three kings of “proprietary†would all be in the same place at the same time.
Related Posts:
