Adobe Quietly Surrenders to Steve Jobs, Builds Flash Alternative

Thanks to a new Flash alternative released Monday, Adobe software will finally be compatible with Apple's mobile devices. Adobe Edge is a new HTML5-powered design tool that the company says will complement its existing suite of web software, including the famously not iPhone-friendly Flash software. In its press release announcing the release, Adobe talks at length about the power of HTML5 and their continued contributions to building products that cater to the new web standard. But except for a tiny mention of compatibility with Apple's mobile operating system, they leave out the fact that they're doing exactly what Steve Jobs told them to do a little over a year ago.

HTML5 has been all the rage in the developer world for a while. Now seven years in the making, the web programming language was always meant to be a more powerful and more open web standard. Not many people outside of the coder community knew about HTML5 until April 2010 when Steve Jobs explained on Apple's website why his company's mobile devices didn't support Adobe's Flash animation software. Jobs links Flash to the "PC era," noting how the future mobile-centric world would be based on "low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards--all areas where Flash falls short." He continues with a pretty upfront recommendation to Adobe's executives: "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.