Where Does Adobe Go From Here?
Its been a bit of a rough year for Adobe Systems. — The company was pummeled in a very public fight over its software with Apple and its chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. — After a number of attempts to sway Apple's opinion, Adobe seemed to give …
Context & Ripple Effects
Adobe’s dispute with Apple had already escalated into public argument: Adobe ran an anti-Apple advertising campaign and founders’ open letter, while a May account framed the conflict as Apple abandoning Adobe. Apple’s decision to stop bundling Flash with Mac OS X turns that argument into a concrete distribution change.
The move arrives as Adobe has also announced an HTML5 video-player widget, giving the company a browser-video product alongside the Flash technology at the center of its Apple conflict.
First-order effects
- Adobe loses automatic Flash Player distribution with future Mac OS X releases, leaving Mac users to obtain the software separately.
- Apple further separates Mac OS X’s default software stack from an Adobe product at the heart of the companies’ public dispute.
Second-order effects
- Adobe’s HTML5 video-player widget becomes more strategically important as a way to serve browser-video needs without depending on Flash’s inclusion in Apple’s operating system.
- Mac software distribution becomes a more direct point of leverage in Apple’s dispute with Adobe, rather than merely a technical implementation detail.
Third-order effects
- If platform owners continue to unbundle contested third-party runtimes, software vendors will have to compete for direct installation and web-standard adoption instead of relying on default operating-system distribution.
The trend: The Apple-Adobe clash is one instance of platform owners using default software distribution to determine which third-party technologies reach users most easily.