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Apple Hires Former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, Destroyer of iPhones

Nerval's Lobster writes "Why did Apple hire former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch as vice president of technology? Adobe and Apple spent years fighting a much-publicized battle over the latter's decision to ban Adobe Flash from iOS devices. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was very public in his condemnation of Flash as a tool for rich-content playback, denigrating it in an April 2010 letter posted on Apple's Website as flawed with regard to battery life, security, reliability and performance. Lynch was very much the public face of Adobe's public-relations pushback to Apple's criticism; in a corporate video shot for an Adobe developer conference in 2009, he even helped run an iPhone over with a steamroller. (Hat tip to Daring Fireball's John Gruber for digging that video up.) As recently as 2010, he was still arguing that Flash was superior to HTML5, which eventually surpassed it to become the virtual industry standard for Web-based rich content. It's interesting to speculate whether Steve Jobs would have hired someone who so publicly denigrated Apple's flagship product. But Jobs is dead, and his corporate successors in Cupertino—tasked with leading Apple through a period of fierce competition — obviously looked at Lynch and decided he'd make a perfect fit as an executive."

2 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Business as usual by alen · · Score: 1, Troll

    yeah but the slashtarts seem to think that if you're employed by one company you have to hate every other company. and they will never hire you either

  2. Re:Apple banned Adobe because iPhone sucked. by PortHaven · · Score: 0, Troll

    Proprietary freely accessible open for develoment no 30% cut versus Apple's walled garden, gouging, and we say what apps can play or not.

    I'll take Rudolph Flash over Adolph Apple.