I'd say the FTC will get involved. This is clearly anticompetitive behavior, though maybe it's allowed since Apple isn't a monopoly.

As much as I dislike this particular move, and Apple's Orwellian control over their platform, bringing this to a lawsuit and getting the FCC involved would be straight-up wrong. Let the market decide this one, Adobe has no legitimate ground whatsoever to force Apple to support it.

I would be hugely disappointed to see Adobe pursue this course of action, and would regard it with significantly more contempt than I currently hold toward Apple.

the market is fucking clueless. it's entirely possible that the path from where we are now to completely locked down "appliances" has monotonically increasing user experience. that doesn't mean it isn't an abysmal local maxima though.

Umm, that's the same market that decided that windows and IE6 should have 95% market share? Is that where we want this to go?

If Apple was judged a monopoly alot of this type of behavior, along with AppStore monopoly, would likely be barred. Until they are judged a monopoly, this is legit from a legal POV.