Adobe slams Jobs’ blog as a ‘smokescreen’

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Adobe has responded to the attack from Apple chief executive Steve Jobs by calling the comments a “smokescreen.”

Yesterday Steve Jobs wrote a blog throwing a number of allegations at Adobe and its Flash product, claiming iPhone and iPad users were better off without it.

However, Shantanu Narayen, chief executive of Adobe, believes it is just about Apple wanting to keep its users under control.

In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal, Narayen said: “The technology aspects of this article are really a smokescreen.”

“We have demonstrated that through Adobe tools you could build content and applications [and] over 100 were accepted onto [Apple’s] store… so when you resort to this licensing language it is clear that it has nothing to do with technology.”

Instead he believes their “business models” differ too much with Adobe wanting to stick to its “vision of multiplatform open systems” and Apple wanting everything done under its own supervision.

Narayen called Jobs’ attack on Adobe’s openness “amusing” and slammed his accusation of all of itsr products being 100 per cent proprietary as “patently false.”

When questioned on whether Flash was the main reason Macs crashed, he said: “If Flash is the number one reason Macs crash, which I am not aware of, then it has as much to do with the Apple operating system.”

He added: “The technology is not the issue.”

After taking a quick dig at the iPhone, saying he used a Google Nexus One handset, and the iPad, referring to it as a “good first generation device,” Narayen concluded that is was time for customers to decide what tools they wanted to use, not for the likes of Apple.

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