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Adobe 'shifting focus' from Apple

Adobe's CTO, in a response to Steve Jobs' criticism of Flash Player, says the two companies could have worked well together but has decided to move on without Apple.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
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In response to Apple CEO Steve Jobs' explanation on why his company refuses to let Adobe Systems' Flash Player on his company's iPhone, Adobe's chief technology officer sounded an upbeat tone and said the company was moving on without Apple.

"We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch," Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch wrote in a company blog post late Thursday. "However, as we posted last week, given the legal terms Apple has imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR."

Lynch also said made a point of highlighting Adobe's work on an iPhone competitor.

"We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a general release in June," he said.

Earlier Thursday, Apple published a rare open letter from Jobs that criticized Flash for being proprietary, sapping battery power, not supporting multitouch interfaces, posing security risks, and being unstable. "Flash is the No. 1 reason Macs crash," Jobs said.

Flash Player, a programming foundation that's ubiquitous on personal computers, is widely used for tasks such as online games, photo editors, and video streaming, and with the upcoming version 10.1, Adobe is trying anew to bring Flash to mobile devices.

The software is designed to work on phones using RIM's BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, Palm's WebOS, Nokia's Symbian, and Google's Android. But Adobe has been increasingly vocal about its dissatisfaction with the Apple situation, especially after Apple barred a new tool from Adobe that would let Flash developers turn their programs into native iPhone applications.