In the continuing saga of Apple v. Flash, Apple has consistently attacked Flash for being closed, clunky, and power draining. After reading Steve Jobs' thoughts on flash yesterday, and thoroughly enjoying Lee Brimelow's "Go screw yourself Apple" post a few weeks back, the thought occurred to me that Adobe is handling this situation very poorly. 

That isn't to say that they're wrong. Ultimately, both sides have made salient points. There are problems with the iPhone OS, and there are issues with Flash. Which is to say absolutely nothing, as there are issues with all software. Where Adobe has erred is in letting Apple dictate the pace and topic of the argument. While in a position of remarkable strength, Apple's attacks are, more or less, desperate. They just launched iPad with the promise of putting the internet in your hands. At least... a lot of the internet. But if I'm a guy that just loves Apple, and I don't really know anything about programming, all I might know is that my magical and revolutionary device has a lot of little blue cubes where it should have videos and interactive experiences. So in order to divert attention from a public that doesn't know anything about Flash and HTML5, Apple picked a fight.

My advice to Adobe? Don't get caught up in the negativity. Adobe is getting more and broader attention right now than it ever has. Sure that attention isn't flattering toward Flash, but so what? Every Adobe response to Apple's aggression should include this reminder: In the life of the internet, anything beautiful that you've come across was likely made with Adobe software, and probably on a Mac. Apple has always relied on the design and development community, and they use Adobe.