Adobe hits back at Apple after Jobs brands company 'lazy'

 

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Posted on 5 Feb 2010 at 12:11

Adobe has hit back at Apple CEO Steve Jobs, after he branded the company 'lazy' and Flash as 'buggy'.

As reported by Wired, Steve Jobs' attack on Adobe came at an Apple Town Hall meeting. He explained to employees that Apple, and its new iPad, does not support Flash because "it is so buggy". He went on to accuse Flash as being the primary source of all Macs crashing and that the technology is doomed as the world will be moving to HTML 5.

Unsurprisingly, Adobe doesn't see it in the same way. Responding to the accusations on the company's blog, Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe wrote, "Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today."

Lynch also explained why Flash support in any browser or device is essential for the internet.

"By augmenting the capabilities of HTML, Flash has been incredibly successful in its adoption, with over 85 per cent of the top web sites containing Flash content and Flash running on over 98 per cent of computers on the Web," he wrote in the blog post. "It is used for the majority of casual games, video, and animation on the Web and familiar brands like Nike, Hulu, BBC, Major League Baseball, and more rely on Flash to deliver the most compelling experiences to over a billion people."

Adobe put the final blame on Apple for the lack of Flash support in the iPad.

"We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen," Lynch wrote.

Comments on the blog were split between supporters of Adobe and Mac users claiming that Jobs is right.

"I've just installed a Flash blocker on Safari as I'm sick of my MacBook doing an impression of a hair dryer every time a bit of Flash pops up," said one user.

"Just fix the bloody thing and then you may have an argument but while it performs like a beta product you really have nothing to contribute. I have blocked all Flash on my [MacBook Air] and now I find my battery lasts twice as long," said another user.

Adobe has defended its position, and stated that Flash 10.1 for Mac OSX will fix many of the performance problems encountered by Mac users. With Flash such an important web technology, hopefully Apple and Adobe can bury their differences and develop plug-ins that everyone's happy with.

Author: David Ludlow