Web 2.0 Summit: Adobe CEO talks Apple, Flash, HTML5

Shantanu Narayen

For Adobe, life has moved on after the infamous Steve Jobs manifesto - even if some of the media outlets haven't let it go. Of course, it became a point of conversation at this morning's Web 2.0 Summit chat with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.

It was "kind of appropriate," he said, that the conference theme is "Points of Control" - a comment that led the discussion right at the big target: Apple. Adobe, he said, has always been about helping people create content for multiple platforms and multiple devices. In that respect, Adobe and Apple are on different sides of that point of control.

But for the most part, Adobe has moved on. When you change the world with your products and technologies, you'll have some fans, he said, and you'll also have some detractors.

His message is simple, though: Adobe continues to offer the tools that developers and content creators need to build apps and rich media content across a number of platforms - even if Apple isn't one of them.

Apple wants to keep things closed, he said, and "ensure that apps created for idevices only work on idevices.

But what about HTML5?  Some people, he said, want to make this a debate between HTML5 and Flash but he said that's not what this is about. Adobe is about the tools and if people want tools to build with HTML5, then Adobe will create the tools that customers want.

When you start to look at how HTML has evolved, it's starting to take some uses cases of Flash,  such as animation, he said. "We welcome that," he said, noting that Adobe will go out and find another area to innovate by pushing the envelope.

Still, he doesn't seem to be losing too much sleep over the Apple matter and appears to have moved on. The company is growing, he said, on track to grow earnings by more than 20 percent this year.

A video clip from this conversation will be available later this week. We'll embed it when the conference organizers release it.