Adobe’s founders have accused Apple of “undermining the next chapter of the web” in the latest instalment of the dispute between the two companies.
The row was sparked by Apple’s decision to effectively ban Adobe’s Flash from its iPhone/iPod/iPad devices, with Steve Jobs publicly labelling Flash buggy and insecure.
Now Adobe has launched its so-called “Freedom of Choice” campaign, in which it’s trying to paint Flash as the ethical alternative to Apple’s closed shop.
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
The campaign includes a public letter from Adobe co-founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock, in which they attack Apple’s philosophy. “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,” the pair write.
“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.
“We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.”
In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the world wide web? And we believe the answer is: nobody — and everybody, but certainly not a single company.”
Security record
In a separate document entitled “The truth about Flash”, Adobe also defends the software’s much maligned security record. “The Symantec Global Internet Threat Report for 2009 found that Flash had the second fewest number of vulnerabilities of all internet technologies listed (which included both web plug-ins and browsers),” the company claims.
“This is significant when you consider that Flash Player is among the most widely distributed and used pieces of software in the world,” it concludes.
Yet, just last month, Steve Jobs claimed in an open letter that “Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009.”
Bizarrely, both are right. While Symantec’s Global Internet Security Threat Report 2009 does state that Flash was responsible for only 4% of plug-in based attacks, the European version of Symantec’s report states that Shockwave Flash was by far and away the biggest target of web-based attacks.
A case of selective statistics if there ever was…
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