Insights into how technology and the outsourcing of R&D are changing the software industry

I’m sure many of you saw the Mashable and TechCrunch posts about Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow’s latest post on the Flash Blog where he ends the post “Go screw yourself Apple.”

As the Mashable piece states, it’s understandable that the folks at Adobe are hopping mad at the latest move by Apple which appears to say that apps created in apps like Adobe Flash Creative Suite, but exported to Apple code won’t be accepted…a mere few days before the release of CS5 (for more background see this post and this one from John Gruber – no relation – at Daring Fireball).  And I’m not even saying whether or not he’s completely right or wrong in his position or that the post is over the top (well, it is).  But from a pure communications perspective I think it’s a mistake for a number of reasons.

• Never write angry  (and he does). It comes through the words and I think you lose credibility with your audience, especially when you’re arguing for your self-interest. I think it distracts from whether their position is right or wrong.  It just becomes complaining.
• Brimelow tried to cast the issue of Flash on the iPad/iPhone/iTouch as a red herring, and it’s not.  It may not be the proximate reason for the post, but it’s surely a major point of contention and in the back of the mind of EVERYONE at Adobe today.  It’s just another statement that seems to belie the true intention of the post and lowers the credibility of the argument he’s trying to make.
• The biggest error I saw was at the very end of the post.  Brimelow tries to separate his views from the company by saying “Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment…” just before he says “Go screw yourself Apple”.  First of all the man is a developer evangelist for Adobe and his job is to use his blog and any other platform to communicate and energize developers about Adobe’s platform.  Merely asking us to ignore that for the last 4 words of the post is moronic.  It’s even stupider given that earlier in the post, he redacts a sentence at Adobe’s request.  In my mind, this is an explicit statement that Adobe communications pros have reviewed the post before it went out, which in my mind is defacto approval of the “screw yourself” statement by Adobe.  I mean am I wrong here?
• Lastly, I think it was a mistake to close comments on the post. Brimelow tries to play this off by saying he doesn’t want spam from Cupertino, but I think more likely he’s just afraid of negative feedback from others in the developer community.  Closing off comments isn’t going to stop Steve Jobs.  I’m sure that if Steve wants to, he’d go on CNN and rip this guy.

What do you think? Agree/disagree? Did I miss anything?