Adobe Ads Challenge Apple's Flash Policy

Adobe on Thursday presented a public challenge to Apple's oversight of its mobile platform, not in a court of law as the company has reportedly been considering, but in the court of public opinion.

The company bought full page ads in fifteen national and international newspapers, including The Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, proclaiming its love for Apple and its lack of enthusiasm for Apple's refusal to support Adobe's Flash technology on iPhone OS devices.

"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," the company's ad says.

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Adobe founders and board co-chairmen John Warnock and Chuck Geschke elaborated on this line of argument in an open letter on the company's Web site.

"We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs," their letter says. "No company -- no matter how big or how creative -- should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the Web."

Geschke and Warnock conclude by claiming that Apple is taking the opposite approach, a path that "could undermine this next chapter of the Web."

In choosing to highlight the competitive impact of Apple's actions, Adobe may be echoing the language it used to communicate its dissatisfaction with Apple to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. The two agencies are reportedly negotiating to see which one will conduct a preliminary antitrust inquiry into Apple's actions.

Adobe's frustration with Apple arises from Apple's decision to change the language in its iPhone OS 4.0 SDK developer agreement to formally disallow applications on the iPhone created using any language other than Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript.

While the broad wording of the change has cast doubt on the future viability of a whole range of cross-platform developer tools for creating iPhone applications, Apple has made it clear that Adobe's Flash technology is the primary target of its new rules.

Last month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an open letter explaining his company's position. Beyond his dissatisfaction with the technical merits of Flash, he justified Apple's rules as necessary to avoid being at the mercy of another company.

"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform," he said. "If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features."

The conflict between the two companies has stoked antagonism between both sides, with Apple partisans disparaging Adobe and vice versa.

The latest casualty is C4, the indie Mac developers conference, which organizer Jonathan Rentzsch canceled on Wednesday to protest Apple's rules.

Declaring his commitment to advances in programming languages and tools, Rentzsch announced he was discontinuing C4 as an expression of dissatisfaction with Apple's tool and programming limitations.

"With that background in place, I hope you can understand how Section 3.3.1 has broken my spirit," he said in a blog post. "Apple is crazy-innovative in terms of hardware and software design, but I can count the total number of software engineering advances they’ve made on one hand. Section 3.3.1 makes developers wholly reliant on Apple for software engineering innovation."

John Nack, principal product manager for Adobe Photoshop, has attempted to address the mudslinging by casting the debate as a matter of freedom of choice.

"You shouldn't care about this stuff because you love or hate Adobe," he said in a blog post about Adobe's ad campaign. "You should care because these issues affect your choices as a customer & a creative person."