Adobe targets Apple in ad campaign launched today, publishes open letter from founders
If you're reading Engadget today (and let's be honest, you're reading it right now), then you might have noticed that Adobe has launched a pretty full-force campaign to call out Apple on its anti-Flash mission.
Context & Ripple Effects
Adobe had already framed the iPad-era Flash dispute as a consumer-content issue in its earlier campaign around Flash and the iPad, and Adobe executives and former engineers publicly answered Steve Jobs' criticism in May 2010. The new advertising push and founders' letter turn that product-policy argument into a sustained public confrontation.
The stakes extend beyond a single plug-in: Adobe says Flash serves most Web video, while Apple is promoting the iPad directly to consumers. That puts publishers and developers caught between Flash-based Web distribution and Apple's platform rules.
First-order effects
- Adobe formalizes its response to Apple's anti-Flash stance with paid messaging and a founders' letter, increasing public pressure on Apple to defend its platform policy.
- Apple's iPad advertising and Adobe's campaign present competing accounts of what an open, full-featured Web experience should look like to buyers and developers.
Second-order effects
- Web publishers and developers using Flash face a clearer incentive to support alternatives for Apple devices rather than rely on a runtime Apple does not accept.
- Adobe must make the case that Flash's installed Web-video base is valuable enough for publishers and consumers to resist Apple's device-level control.
Third-order effects
- If device makers can determine which application runtimes reach their users, Web-content distribution shifts from a browser-led model toward platform-specific technical choices.
- The dispute is an early test of whether public campaigns can alter platform governance, or whether Apple can set software-access rules through its device ecosystem.
The trend: Mobile platforms are becoming gatekeepers over the technologies developers can use to reach consumers, forcing Web-software vendors to defend distribution as well as features.