Apple, Adobe spar over Flash

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said some nasty things about Adobe Flash last week, and now both sides are fighting over the platform’s relevance.

Technically, Adobe, along with employee and Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow, cast the first stones. Adobe criticized Apple’s upcoming iPad as a “broken link,” for not supporting Flash, and Brimelow posted a blog showing Web sites that won’t run on the iPad. Brimelow’s post raised eyebrows for pointing out not only the obvious Flash sites, such as Hulu and AddictingGames, but a porn site. He ultimately deleted the porn site image from his collage of non-functioning sites upon Adobe’s stern request.

But the sparks really flew during a “Town Hall” Apple meeting in which Jobs spoke to his employees. An anonymous informant told Wired that Jobs called Adobe lazy. He said Apple doesn’t support Flash on the iPhone or iPad because the platform is too buggy, and the world is moving to HTML5 anyway, and that when a Mac crashes, it’s more often than not because of Flash. (Another zinger from the event: Jobs reportedly said Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra is “bullshit” or “a load of crap” — two audience members dispute the exact quote — because the search company is now invading Apple’s smartphone turf.)

What’s interesting about this spat is not just that it’s juicy gossip, but that it stirs up a lot of issues with Flash. Yes, a lot of cool Web sites — and a lot of scandalous ones — rely on Flash, but Apple might be at the helm of a big change.

This image on Flickr shows how many of the Flash sites mentioned by Adobe’s Brimelow have already been duplicated for the iPhone or released as native iPhone apps. Technologist Robert Scoble says many developers he’s talked to are cutting Flash out of their future Web designs. Even Hulu, a site that’s often brought up in arguments for Flash on the iPhone, could be working on an iPhone app, according to GigaOM.

Instead of fighting with Apple’s anti-flash stance, developers are participating. In cutting Flash out of its plans, Apple is slowly killing it.