Adobe CEO says Apple’s ban of Flash “has nothing to do with technology”

Earlier today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published a 1,671-word essay that listed six reasons his company refused to support Adobe’s Flash technology, the most popular video format online and a front-runner for games and user interfaces.

“Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future,” Jobs concluded, “and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Reporters at the Wall Street Journal lined up an interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to respond to Jobs’ claims.

“I’ve met him on a number of occasions,” Narayen said. But he disagreed with most of what Jobs wrote.

“We have different views of the world,” he said. “Our view of the world is multiplatform.”

• On Jobs’ characterization of Apple as an open platform for software developers, and Adobe as closed: “I find it amusing, honestly. Flash is an open specification.”
• On Apple’s rules that require iPhone OS apps to be written exclusively for iPhone OS, rather than converted from Flash to the H.264 format Apple supports: “It doesn’t benefit Apple, and that’s why you see this reaction” from software developers who balk at creating apps for Apple gadgets. “It would be better if you could use one set” of development tools.
• If Flash crashes on Apple hardware, that’s “to do with the Apple operating system.” (As a former Unix hacker, I have to ask: How does that work?)
• On Jobs’ claim that Flash drains mobile gadget batteries: “Patently false.”

Apple technology pundit John Gruber wrote a smart-aleck response to Narayen’s claims: “Who are we supposed to believe, Shantanu Narayen or our own lying Activity Monitors?”

[Photo: Flickr/Robert Scoble]