The Adobe versus Apple war is heating up, or at least getting dragged on, instead of winding down like it seemed it was doing recently. The conflict started escalating when Apple forbid developers from using Flash for App Store applications. Later, an open letter from Steve Jobs himself seemed to have sealed the deal. Adobe didn’t like it, and rebutted the arguments Jobs made, but it looked like the company had made its peace with the situation.
That didn’t last long, Adobe has fired another salvo, though this one looks more like a peace offering. The software giant is running a big campaign across a number of publications declaring its love for Apple. Yes, Adobe actually uses the word ‘love.’ The main argument in the campaign is that Adobe loves openness and all platforms, even Apple’s. It’s not all milk and honey, Adobe does send out a rather veiled warning that what Apple is doing ‘is just not cool.’
"We love creativity. We love innovation. We love apps. We love the Web. We love Flash. We love our 3 million developers. We love healthy competition. We love touch screens. We love our Open Screen Project partners.
We love HTML5. We love authoring code only once. We love all devices. We love all platforms. What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the Web" is what the full ad says.
The whole thing started with Apple’s decision not to include Flash in the iPhone and later on in the iPad. Adobe tried its best, but Apple wouldn’t budge. In fact, it went one step further; it made it impossible for any app maker to use third-party technologies, including Flash, to create apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Even later on, Steve Jobs wrote a long argument saying that the decision was purely technical and that Flash is slow, eats up the battery and crashes a lot. Now, Jobs may have a point, but few people actually believed these to be the sole motives. Instead, it’s clear that Apple wants complete control over its platform and will go to any length to ensure it.
Adobe, seeing that, for the first time in a very long time, it was actually labeled as the good guy, decided to play that card further with this new ad campaign. Again, what Adobe states is all very nice. But fact is, just like Apple, it may be bending the truth a little. Or even more than a little, Adobe cares about openness just as much as it suits it. It cares way more about having Flash on as many devices as possible, so it can sell more copies of its Creative Suite.
In the end, all this public fronting isn’t going to change anything. Apple won’t allow Flash on its devices and there’s nothing Adobe can do about that. What’s more, if it really wants people on its side, it has to deliver a proper product, a mobile Flash Player that works well. Because Apple can play the bad guy all it wants, it’s not going to lose out as long as the iPhone and all of its other products are loved by consumers.
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