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The Adobe-Apple Flash war used to be one of the juiciest catfights around, but, much like two aging boxers, both sides now appear willing to  act like adults  put it all behind them. Speaking at yesterday's D9 conference in Palos Verdes, California, Adobe head Shantanu Narayen confirmed that he and Steve Jobs have reached an unofficial armistice, bringing an end to their prolonged war of words. According to the CEO, Apple's Flash issues stemmed from the company's "business model," rather than any legitimate concerns over quality. "It's control over the app store that's at issue here," Narayen said, implying that Flash's wide-ranging platform compatibility may not have jibed with the Cupertino ethos. He went on to remind moderator Walt Mossberg that developers can still use Adobe's AIR software to get their products to the App Store, adding that his company is looking forward to the rise of HTML5 and "actively contributing" to i...

Any new technology generally costs an arm, a leg, and a bit of your sanity to adopt early, but that's a luxury that the well settled auto market cannot afford. In light of its elastic economics, car makers looking to go electric have had to be extremely aggressive in cutting their own profits, an aggressiveness that's now been estimated by Fiat's CEO Sergio Marchionne to cost them as much as $10,000 per unit sold . Fiat's famed little car, the Cinquecento, is going to be hitting the US in a new EV configuration in 2012, in spite of the fact it'll be causing a ding to the company's bottom line. It's not actually clear whether Mr. Marchionne is factoring in research and development costs or whether he's talking purely of material costs, though Fiat's fate is hardly unique -- the Nissan Leaf isn't expected to generate a profit for a good couple of years yet. The Fiat 500 EV's likely price was indirectly revealed, too, by the company...