CEOs discuss Apple at Web 2.0 Summit
While the Web 2.0 Summit was under way from Nov. 15 through Nov. 17, there were a few inevitable pot shots at Apple from attending chief executive officers. This isn't really a surprise with the ongoing growth of Apple and Apple's overall value, but it's definitely interesting to see what those CEOs felt needed to be said.
Shantanu Narayen is the CEO of Adobe Systems, and he told the Web 2.0 Summit audience that "there's a war happening for developers, there's a war to get the best applications for a particular platform." Narayen considered the conflict between Apple and Adobe to be an issue of control and that the two companies are on different sides of that line.
When asked to define how Narayen saw the two sides of the conflict, he was willing to explain. "Apple would like to keep [the web ecosystem] closed and proprietary," claimed the Adobe CEO. Narayen opined that Apple wants to "ensure that applications created for the iDevices only work on the iDevices if they're native applications." By contrast, Narayen claimed that Adobe would prefer to create content across all the web and mobile platforms. As if that weren't enough, Narayen's finished off that depiction by declaring, "Let the games begin!"
Jim Balsillie, who is a co-CEO of Research in Motion, was a little more direct when comparing Apple's iOS devices to the Blackberry. In a soundbite that's likely to be heard around the world, Balsillie said that users "don't need an app for the web." He claimed that RIM's upcoming tablet, the PlayBook, would be up to four times faster for browsing than the iPad. Balsillie felt that the "appification" of the web shouldn't be necessary and that websites shouldn't need to convert to some kind of mobile version to be accessed. Even more importantly, Balsillie predicted later in his Web 2.0 Summit discussion that the "appification" would soon be reversed, and that the era of the app would be passing soon.
Check out the videos for yourself in the second half of this post.
[via TechCrunch and The Telegraph]
