Adobe is set to unveil its newest creative software suite, Creative Suite 5 (CS5). The most exciting aspect of the new CS5 is a feature that allows app programmers to write a program once and have it able to run on multiple devices. To those who campaign for open source and a level playing field, the announcement of this feature in CS5 may seem like a watershed moment for applications on mobile devices...
Yet amid the hype, Apple has stepped up and thrown a wet blanket on the whole idea. Apple spokespeople have been quoted as saying that although the company "embraces standard technologies" , Adobe's Flash is closed and proprietary, and thus Flash is barred from apps created for Apple's iPhone and iPad.
To me the accusation that the proprietary nature of Flash is why Apple has chosen not to support the new CS5 offering from Adobe is a thinly veiled attempt at maintaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace. In fact the opposite appears to be true: Apple's currently enjoys an advantage in the market because of the superior apps that it offers on their devices and they don't want anyone to mess with the current nature of things.
But with Android gaining share in the market Apple is now forcing programmers to choose between which operating system their app will run on. Perhaps more realistically, Apple is just forcing programmers to do more work by creating the same app on two different systems. Seems pretty silly to me... maybe Apple should come out with a catchy ad campaign about how the end user loses out on this one.
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