Adobe vs. Apple War Heats Up

It’s been obvious for a while that Steve Jobs isn’t a fan of Adobe or its problem-ridden Flash platform, but the situation was highlighted even further with the launch of the iPad two weekends ago. Apple said that the device wouldn’t include Flash support… not now, and not ever, and its excuse came down to battery-life. Many people refuse to believe that battery-life has anything to do with it, though, since saving 5% of your battery-life doesn’t seem like an even trade to crippling your Web experience.

Unless Adobe truly fixes many of the problems that have plagued Flash for what seems like forever, I’m not going to be one to defend it. But the fact is, even despite its problems, I’m not about to run a Web without the plugin, because going that route actually does cripple the experience. Sites like YouTube are beginning to test the HTML 5 waters, but we’re still a long way off before Adobe has any reason to worry.

The lack of Flash on the iPod and iPhone created ire in many, but news to come out this past weekend made the entire situation even worse. Adobe has been in the process of building a sort of compiler translator that would allow Flash developers to create an app via the methods they’re used to, and then run a tool to convert it into XCode to have it function on Apple’s devices.

But Apple’s latest SDK states that without a reasonable doubt, any applications not coded with XCode and its various libraries will not be accepted into the App Store. This means a couple of things. One, Flash developers would have to program their apps in both Flash -and- XCode, would have to learn how to code using XCode, and would also have to build their apps on an Apple-based PC, since XCode only runs natively there.

Apple’s defense is that the exclusivity boils down to keeping things secure and stable, but since both solutions would deliver an identical end-result, it’s clear that there’s much more to the story. It’s very unlikely that Apple stands to benefit from such a stance, and Adobe’s sure could do without the hassle. Of course, there’s also both developers and consumers who lose in the end-game.

It seems like this “war” is only just beginning, so the next couple of weeks should prove mighty interesting, especially if Adobe continues to remain so vocal about the situation.

First, before we look at the iPhone OS 4.0 fallout, let’s skip to somewhat happier times (to last weekend) when Adobe’s employees lined up at the Apple store to eagerly purchase Steve Jobs’ latest offering. Arno Gourdol, a member of the Adobe Air team, documents their morning: “After queuing for an hour at the flagship Apple Store in SF this morning, we finally got our hands on a stack of magical devices. We’ve spent the rest of the day having fun getting the first Adobe AIR apps running on the iPad….We have also been working on bringing up the first “HD” apps that take advantage of the gorgeous screen of the iPad.”