The beef between Apple and Adobe over the lack of Flash on the iPhone OS continues to get more heated, as Adobe’s Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch said the main issue is a political one, not a technological one.
This echoes what Adobe’s CEO has said in the past, as Lynch said Apple’s problem with its nearly-ubiquitous web technology
“is not that it doesn’t work, it’s that it does work.” This implies that the iPhone maker is more concerned with controlling the tools its developers use rather than offering content creators choice.
“We don’t want want to play technology games while Apple is playing a legal game,” he said. “Boy, there’s a lot of great devices coming out, and you’re going to be blown away when you see them.”
Of course, Steve Jobs and Apple see it differently. In a long, sharply-worded post, Jobs outlined six major reasons why Flash shouldn’t be allowed on its mobile platform: the proprietary nature of Flash, the healthy alternative options, the performance issues, battery life, the lack of touch optimization and the potential for Apple’s platform to be at the mercy of a third party. While most of these complaints are very biased, I do think there is something to be said about the lack of touch optimization but I’m sure developers would be able to pull this off if they could get on more touch devices like the iPad.
This isn’t like a rapper’s feud where multi-millionaires are just trying to attract attention, as devices like the iPhone, iPad and other connected devices are going to be the future of computing as we know it. That’s why the federal government may be stepping in to investigate Apple’s ban hammer, and that’s why Adobe is aggressively trying to get its Flash and AIR technology on other platforms like Android.
[Via MobileBeat]