Iron Man: Steve Jobs is even tougher than you think.

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Iron Man | PBS: "Iron Man: Steve Jobs is even tougher than you think."

The major point here is that Adobe is in play, or at least Apple thinks so. The company has plenty of cash and stock to do the deal and plenty of incentive, too. Apple's goal in acquiring Adobe would be to control first Flash and second Adobe's emerging Air application platform. Adobe announced this week a broad industry initiative to extend Flash to mobile devices, but Apple wasn't a participant. Why bother if you intend to shortly own Flash outright?