The Apple and Adobe Row

I'm finding the ongoing row between Apple and Adobe quite fascinating, with both making some interesting points. I must admit I don't use either companies products apart from Flash and Acrobat Reader (and I avoid QuickTime as much as I possibly can), I think both companies products are expensive for what they are. Although having said that I can't find fault with the design and quality of Apples hardware and there are no tools which equal the likes of Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

So why do I find it fascinating? Simple, it's another take on the 'is Flash good or bad for the web argument'. Now Apple have decided that Flash and anything derived from Flash is bad for the iPhone and iPad and have banned it, and it will be interesting to see if that affects sales, I tend to think not. I also tend to agree with the points Apple are making regarding how poorly written Flash is. I've no idea if Flash really does cause Macs to crash, but that argument sounds awfully familiar, after all most times that Windows crashes it's down to poorly written software (usually device drivers) rather than the OS itself, so I'm inclined to believe it.

I've also been surprised at how often both Flash & Acrobat Reader updates have been released recently and there have been many reports of security holes in both products which allowed malware onto machines, which is probably what prompted the updates, which again lends weight to the Apple argument. Personally I think Adobe have been lucky with security up until the last year or two, with all the flaws in Windows and Internet Explorer that hackers could exploit there was no need to look elsewhere. But now that those flaws are harder to find hackers are looking at other products and have found Flash & Acrobat Reader to be relatively easy targets.

But is Flash bad for the web? I don't think so, I think we need it and technologies like SilverLight to provide rich interactive interfaces which are impossible (or at least very hard) to do with HTML and JavaScript. I've no doubt that the iPhone and iPad will continue to be sold in large numbers and I'm equally sure that Flash will continue to be used to provide improved use experiences on the web.

Ultimately what it all means is that if a developer wants to provide the same rich user experience for his web site on the iPhone/iPad that everyone else has via Flash then he'll have to develop an App to acheive it, which is probably what Apple want anyway.