Apple’s determination to keep Flash off the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, etc., may be leading toward a lawsuit. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing for “IT World” (http://www.itworld.com/legal/104320/adobe-vs-apple-going-get-uglier), says “sources close to Adobe tell me that Adobe will be suing Apple within a few weeks.”
“It was bad enough when Apple said, in effect, that Adobe Flash wasn’t good enough to be allowed on the iPad,” he writes. “But the final straw was when Apple changed its iPhone SDK (software development kit) license so that developers may not submit programs to Apple that use cross-platform compilers.”
Adobe has made no comment on any such action. However, Lee Brimelow, an Adobe platform evangelist, is obviously one of many Adobe employes ticked off at Apple. In his personal web site, “The Flash Blog” (http://theflashblog.com/?p=1888), he said, “Go screw yourself, Apple.”
In expressing what he emphasizes are purely his own opinions, Brimelow writes:
“Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone. This would be like us putting something in our SDK to make it impossible for 3rd-party editors like FDT to work with our platform. I can tell you that we wouldn’t even think or consider something like that.
“Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.
“Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I’ve already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I’m also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.”