Adobe CEO on Steve Jobs' "Thought on Flash"

Earlier on Thursday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an essay in which he took Adobe to task over its Flash software, which Apple does not support on its mobile products, such as the iPhone and iPad. Below, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen discusses the essay in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Allan Murray

  • Mr. Murray likens the Apple-Adobe fight to that between reality TV stars Jon and Kate Gosselin and asks about the history between the two companies. Mr. Narayan says that Adobe has been “true to the position” with which it was founded and to the idea that it should help people deal with multiple operating systems.
  • Mr. Narayan talks about Adobe “certainly” shipping on Android’s latest version. He says that it is an “incredibly productive time” for Adobe and discusses Creative Suite 5, saying that Adobe’s “innovation is blowing people away.”
  • The technology problems that Mr. Jobs mentions in his essay are “really a smokescreen,” Mr. Narayan says. He says more than 100 applications that used Adobe’s software were accepted in the App Store. “When you resort to licensing language” to restrict this sort of development, he says, it has “nothing to do with technology.”
  • He says that Apple’s restrictiveness is just going to make it “cumbersome” for developers who are trying to make products that work on many devices. They’re going to have to have “two workflows” … one for Apple devices and one for others.
  • Speaking about Mr. Jobs’s assertion that Adobe is the No. 1 cause of Mac crashes, Mr. Narayan says if Adobe crashes Apple, that actually has something “to do with the Apple operating system.”

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