You ever been in one of those uncomfortable situations where Tom and Steve have a falling out, and are no longer friends, but you’re still friends with both of them, but you can’t really talk about either of them to either of them, because you’ll just get an earful?

Well, that’s what’s happening right now to my technology, as my two favouritest tech companies are having a falling out. I have been an Apple user since the Apple II. I’ve been using Adobe products since there started to be Adobe products. This is how I run my business: Adobe products. Apple computer. And there’s a lot of photographers who run their businesses this way, too.

We’ve known about the issues with Flash on the iPhone ever since the iPhone came out. But in the last week, the fight has gotten a lot uglier.

Adobe offered a fairly conciliatory overture when it was announced that they were going to start offering Flash programmers the ability to cross-compile Flash programs to a format that would work on devices like the iPad and iPhone. Apple, with the announcement of iPhone 4.0, has added language which sounds like using this program could not be used.

Here’s the excerpt from the developer license agreement.

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)

Which really does sound like a legalalese for “Hahaha! Go screw yourself, Adobe.”

The official response from Adobe has been measured,

Unofficially, though? The sparks are starting to fly. John Gruber points out a Tweet from Adobe’s John Dowdell:

I know that a number of good people work at Apple. If you’re seeking a more ethical company, Adobe is hiring: adobe.com/aboutadobe/careeropp

Ouch. But that’s not the most Lee Brimelow, a Flash Evangelist for Adobe has posted his personal response in much clearer language than Apple’s aforementioned legalese: “Go screw yourself, Apple.”

Aw, man, now things are just going to get really uncomfortable whenever I’m hanging out with one of them, and the other one happens to walk by….

I just hope this doesn’t escalate to a point where Adobe stops making programs for the Mac or anything really stupid like that. Then again, I hear Aperture 3 is supposed to be really good….

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