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Adobe Flash evangelist: 'Go screw yourself Apple'

Spat between Adobe and Apple gets a little hotter with new post from Adobe Flash platform evangelist Lee Brimelow condemning Apple for recent actions.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn
2 min read

A blog post by Adobe Flash platform evangelist Lee Brimelow has brought more fire to what's become a very public fight between Apple and Adobe over the inclusion of Flash and other Adobe technologies in Apple's portable devices.

In it, Brimelow highlights the differences between the two companies, and compares Apple's recent decision to bar third-party APIs from app development to a game of chess, where Apple is using developers as "pawns" in a "crusade against Adobe." He goes on to say that he plans not to purchase another Apple product until someone else is in charge of the company.

Brimelow points out that the two companies have shared a close history with one another, but that the changes to the SDK agreement highlight the main difference in how the two look at the developers who use their tools:

Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone. This would be like us putting something in our SDK to make it impossible for third-party editors like [Flash Development Tool] to work with our platform. I can tell you that we wouldn't even think or consider something like that.

Brimelow also assuaged fears that Apple's moves would lead to Adobe pulling out of developing software, including the company's upcoming CS5 suite, which is being released next week. "We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company," he said.

The post is capped off by saying "go screw yourself Apple," though Brimelow was careful to note that he said this not as a representative of Adobe.

In case you haven't been keeping track of the spat--and it's recent elevation, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has made some very negative, and public comments about Adobe's Flash over the past few months, primarily about its performance.

This came to a head during Thursday's iPhone OS 4 preview, where Jobs took several digs at Flash while introducing the iAd platform, which uses HTML5 to serve up interactive elements inside of applications. Shortly thereafter, blogger John Gruber discovered that the legal language within the iPhone SDK agreement had been expanded to keep non-approved APIs, including Adobe's Flash Compiler, from being used in app development. For more on that, read my colleague Stephen Shankland's story: Did Apple just exile Adobe from iPhone OS 4?