Jobs: we're open, Adobe is closed

Stephen Withers
Friday, 30 April 2010 14:11

IT Industry - Strategy

The latest round in the spat between Apple and Adobe over Flash is one of Steve Jobs' occasional open letters, and Shantanu Narayen's retorts.

Since the arrival of the original iPhone, the absence of Flash has been a much debated issue. Fresh fuel was recently added to the fire when Apple rewrote its iPhone OS developer agreement with language that ruled out the use of Adobe's Flash packager technology that went on sale in Creative Suite 5 just a few days later.

Some of Apple's critics have chosen to paint iPhone OS as a closed system and Flash as open.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has issued one of his occasional open letters, spelling out his thoughts on Flash.

He justifies the ban on Flash packaging and similar technologies by saying "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."

Issues are said to include delay in adopting platform enhancements, and "lowest common denominator" support in cross-platform tools. Jobs points to Adobe's poor record in taking full advantage of Mac OS X as supporting evidence.

What else did Jobs have to say? And how did Adobe respond? See page 2.