Adobe has hit back at Steve Jobs and Apple over his refusal to allow the company’s widely used Flash video product to run on the iPhone and iPad.

Adobe placed advertisements on popular technology websites and in major US newspapers responding to the Apple chief executive’s outspoken criticism of Abode technology. Mr Jobs said that it caused Apple products to crash and drained their battery life.

“We [heart] Apple,” the Adobe ads said, adding: “What we don’t love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web.”

Mr Jobs declared war on Adobe two weeks ago with a scathing attack on its Flash video programming technology.

The spat between the two companies over their vision of the future development of the internet burst into the open when Mr Jobs published a letter, branding Flash a failure on mobile devices.

Flash is the most widespread video player technology on the web, used by many millions of sites for videos and games.

Apple has never allowed Flash on the iPhone and the new iPad also does not support the technology, prompting complaints from users and reviewers.

Mr Jobs said that the most important reason for excluding Flash was that it put a third party between Apple and software developers. That meant that developers could take advantage of improvements from Apple only if Adobe chose to upgrade its own software, Mr Jobs wrote. He said that Apple controlled all aspects of the software and hardware of its devices to produce a better consumer experience.

Adobe’s online advertisements linked to Adobe.com where the company’s co-founders published an open letter defending Flash.

“As the founders of Adobe, we believe open markets are in the best interest of developers, content owners, and consumers,” Chuck Geschke and John Warnock said.

“We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favourite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs.”

According to Adobe, whose other well-known products include Photoshop and Adobe Reader, which manages PDF files, 75 per cent of all video on the web is viewed using its Flash Player.

Mr Jobs said that Flash was developed for the era of PCs and mice. “But the mobile era is about low-power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards — all areas where Flash falls short,” he said. Apple devices instead support video built using HTML5, a fledgling software format created by a group of technology firms, including Google and Apple.

“Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind,” Mr Jobs said.

Adobe’s co-founders rejected Mr Jobs’s criticism and said that software that performs on multiple platforms and devices is crucial to the future of the open web.

“If the web fragments into closed systems, if companies put content and applications behind walls, some, indeed, may thrive — but their success will come at the expense of the very creativity and innovation that has made the internet a revolutionary force,” they said.

“We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web, the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.”

“In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the world wide web? And we believe the answer is: nobody and everybody, but certainly not a single company.”

Independent software developers have been caught in the middle of the dispute. They want to develop applications that use Flash on the web, but do not want to ignore the potentially lucrative iPhone market. They complain that they do not have the time or resources to create entirely different versions for both platforms.

Apple’s decision to stop allowing developers writing programmes for its devices to use Adobe software has attracted the attention of US antitrust regulators who are investigating whether its stance is anti-competitive.