Apple watchers were a bit taken aback by the news yesterday that Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch will be joining the company as a vice president of technology, with some Apple fanboys saying they are surprised by the choice and pointing out that Lynch has been a vocal critic of the company in the past.
Lynch, a longtime software executive, may be best known for his part in the public feud between Adobe and Apple over Adobe Flash’s video and animation technology — a feud that prompted former Apple CEO Steve Jobs to pen an open letter in April 2010 pointing out all the reasons why Flash wasn’t being supported in the iPhone and iPad.
“Wait. Are we talking about the same guy? The chief defender of Flash?” said venture capitalist MG Siegler after the news yesterday. “Times change.”
Longtime Apple blogger John Gruber ofDaring Fireball was a little more direct in his criticism, calling Lynch a “bozo” and a “bad hire,” and pointing to blog posts and a MythBusters parody (below) in which Lynch defends Flash and generally slams Apple. “I get that the guy worked for Adobe and had to play for the home team, but as CTO he backed a dying technology for years too long. In 2007 when the iPhone shipped Flash-free, that was one thing,” Gruber wrote in his blog. “But for Adobe to still be backing the Flash horse in 2010 when the iPad came out — they just looked silly. Flash Player had already lost. It was over. It was like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail — Flash Player had had its arms cut off and Lynch was telling us it was “just a flesh wound.”
(Gruber later explained his definition of bozo, referring to a 2012 post by Forbes contributor Eric Jackson about Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography and how that led him to define a bozo as “someone who thinks they are much smarter and capable than they actually are. They constantly over-estimate their abilities and under-estimate the risks and threats around them. They typically don’t keep an open-mind. They look instead for data that confirms a previously held bias.”)
“An argument can obviously be made that Lynch was a staunch defender of Flash because it was his job to be one, but his role as Chief Technology Officer also means that he had considerable influence over the direction of Adobe’s efforts with respect to Flash,” said MacRumors’ Eric Slivka. “As a result, Lynch’s continued defense of Flash even as it was clear that mobile devices were driving technology toward HTML5 solutions has raised eyebrows and generated concern over whether he will be a good fit for Apple.”
Not everyone is as critical of Lynch. Former Apple executive Michael Macesaid that Lynch inherited some of the bad decision making at Adobe. “I could go on and on about the opportunities Adobe squandered: AIR, e-books…it’s a depressing list that reminds me of the stories people tell about Xerox PARC. If I thought Kevin Lynch was the executive responsible for those moves, I’d be shocked that Apple hired him. But as far as I can tell, they were made by other people, and he was stuck playing out the hand he was dealt,” Mace said, acknowledging that he has done some consulting work for Adobe. “I’ve been there, I’ve done that. If you’re part of a team you do the best you can and trust that the folks around you will do theirs. If you want to fault Kevin for something, fault him for staying so long at a company that was putting quarterly profits ahead of long-term investment.”
AppleInsider pointed out Lynch’s long history in the Mac development community and said that makes him a better pick than some failed Apple executives, including iOS chief Scott Forstall, who was ousted last year after the Maps debacle, and former IBM executive Mark Papermaster.
“While Lynch already has a well documented, historical difference with Apple in regard to Flash, his history in developing Macintosh applications and working near Apple in the same Silicon Valley environment are likely to make him a better fit at Apple,” said Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider.
Lynch’s last day at Adobe is March 22.
Posts
