Adobe CEO Responds To Steve Jobs About Flash [Updated]

Considering the scathing nature of Steve Job's open letter about Flash Player and Adobe, we're not surprised to hear that Adobe's CEO, Shantanu Narayen, has made some official comments in reply. Courtesy of an interview the man just had with The Wall Street Journal, we've got some pretty interesting remarks as to what Jobs said earlier this morning. In the end though, it's nothing we haven't heard before, but that doesn't make it any less obvious that the two companies are indeed butting heads.

When it comes to the open letter itself, Narayen suggests that it's nothing more than a "smokescreen," apparently designed to confuse the industry about what's really happening here. And no, Narayen doesn't do anything to clear up the situation on his end, either. He openly rebuttals the idea that Flash isn't open, calling his platform an "open specification." Perhaps a bit more straight forward though, Adobe's CEO said that Job's claims about Flash negatively affecting battery life are "patently false," and actually suggested that, actually, it's more of an OS X issue, rather than a Flash-based problem.

Near the end, Narayen pointed out that Adobe is a system for devs to create multiplatform tools, easier. And, yes, that's the core argument here. These two companies can argue the differences between system performance until their blue in the face, and we imagine that everyone will want to join in, but the real issue here is the development process. Ultimately, will Flash make an impact with Froyo, the next version of Android? Or will Flash on mobile devices still just be a pain, rather than something we look forward to? That's the only way for Adobe to argue the points listed by Jobs.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

Update:Moving Forward

Posted by Kevin Lynch, CTO on April 29, 2010 5:32 PM

This morning Apple posted some thoughts about Flash on their web site.

The primary issue at hand is that Apple is choosing to block Adobe's

widely used runtimes as well as a variety of technologies from other

providers.

Clearly, a lot of people are passionate about both Apple and Adobe and

our technologies. 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.

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. We are working to

bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the

mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP),

Microsoft, Nokia and others.

We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android

smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a

general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number

and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which

we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.