Adobe Responds to Jobs

> Narayen [spoke exclusively](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/29/live-blogging-the-journals-interview-with-adobe-ceo/) with *The Wall Street Journal* Thursday afternoon after Jobs’ letter, entitled “Thoughts on Flash,” was posted on Apple’s website. The Adobe CEO said he believes that multi-platform options like Flash will “eventually prevail,” because they allow developers to write software that can be used on a number of devices, rather than being tied to Apple’s iPhone OS ecosystem through the App Store. > > “We have different views of the world,” Narayan reportedly said of Adobe and Apple. “Our view of the world is multi-platform.” Wow. That was a mistake. I really thought Adobe would have been smart enough to simply ignore Apple’s statement this morning, or at least do a simple press release saying “We respectfully disagree, but will go on making our great products, etc.”

Narayen comes off sounding like a pompous ass in this interview, if you ask me. And a stupid one, at that.

So far, all we’ve seen from the Adobe side is “Screw you, Apple” and “We’re open, they’re closed!” even though everyone knows that’s not true. Meanwhile, Jobs’ statement, while critical of Adobe, was rather reasoned and emotion-free. It’s like watching a child fight with an adult.

Adobe still thinks it can win this battle in the media, which is really unfortunate.

The reason why Adobe can’t win the media battle is that Apple understands better who they are talking to. Jobs’ statement was very consumer-centric. Apple is looking out for its customers. Adobe’s comments in this interview are business-centric. “Our view of the world is multi-platform.” In other words, we look out for our business partners, no matter how much that screws consumers.

Consumers don’t want things that are developed for multi-platform. They want products made exclusively for them. You say things like “Our view of the world is multi-platform” to a room full of developers, not a reporter.

Products are bought by real people. If consumers get a nasty taste in their mouths over this Flash thing, and they blame Adobe, then they stop buying products that contain Adobe technology. And then Adobe’s business partners are left selling something no one is buying.

This has been the fundamental problem with Flash over the past few years. Adobe has been spending all of its efforts on making Flash more attractive to advertisers, media companies, other businesses, all the while making it less and less attractive to consumers. All the development has been in locking down rights, permissions, injecting ads—almost no effort whatsoever has gone into making Flash a great user experience. Thus, the bugs, the crashes, the hogging of resources. The product is crap, because they spend all the time and money pitching it, instead of using it.

Jobs knows the media better than anyone. The man has been bending the media to his will since the ’70s. Taking him head-on in this arena would be suicide for a seasoned pro; it’s suicide ten times over for a drip like Narayen.

At this point, if Adobe wants to have any hope at all of succeeding with Flash, it needs to stop talking, and start shipping Flash on some mobile product. Any mobile product. Until then, all the bellyaching sounds like childish ranting.