JD on EP

From where I am looking, they are definitely both moving into each other's territories, and he is correct in identifying the faultline. Flex and WPF/XAML are conceptually similar ideas for creating / delivering web based apps, which both companies are placing significant bets will be the future.
Look at technologies like Apollo and LiveCycle and Flex and ask yourself what Adobe's doing there. It's a lot more than being the main video delivery platform.

The problem for MS with this, is that while they have millions of developers, the average standard of UI design on the PC is woeful (and the good stuff drowned out by the bad).

Adobe have a lot of designers, but a comparatively tiny development base.

I'd dispute how many of these designers will make good application designers, as that is a very different skill from graphical design - it's closer to industrial design than anything else - but it is closer than most developers.

The other question is which will be the more important in delivering the next generation of apps.

Clarification: This is titled "Scoble's Deathmatch" because those are his words. His long piece had this towards the top:
"I was over at Adobe yesterday and they have some major things coming next year that'll play off of Adobe's strengths and take the battle back to Redmond."

I checked with Adobe staffers who hosted him and they did not go on with all this "war", "armies", "deathmatch" allegory. Those are Robert's words.

Adobe and Microsoft compete in some areas and cooperate in others, so the "total war" framing seems strange to me. Regardless, those quotes are not from Adobe, as his phrasing may imply, but are his own opinions.

I've been messing with Interaction Designer and quite honestly I'm excited to see competition for Director (in hopes that Adobe updates) or a new platform.

Microsoft has resisted separating the interface layer from the Windows_HMS (hardware management system) for too long.

If the resource hogging WPF can be turned off and one can build a look alike using Apollo that mom and her bridge club can all use to play on the internet from the safety of the sandbox...

How is this not a threat to Microsoft?

What's more is that then mom's look and feel can be accessed from any computer using any underlying operating system over the years.

How long until the corporations understand that Linux under the same Apollo based presentation layer works more reliably?

The real question is how quickly will it happen... Let's use video as reference model...

There's just one problem, Microsoft is a pathetic copycat, and one day more people will actually begin to see through the veil. To this day, I'm amazed anyone ever uses a PC for anything that they do not have to. Come on Flex Builder OS X!