Ionic's CEO Max Lynch clarifies the differences between Cordova and PhoneGap, highlighting that Cordova is an open-source project originally created by Nitobi to bridge web technologies with native app capabilities, while PhoneGap is Adobe's branded version with additional proprietary services. Adobe acquired Nitobi in 2011 and contributed Cordova to the Apache Software Foundation. Cordova serves as a powerful low-level API that allows developers to create mobile apps using web technologies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, with the ability to access native functions through plugins. Despite Cordova's goal of becoming obsolete by having its APIs adopted by browsers, Lynch argues for more customizable and creative hybrid apps, advocating for the development of more generic native-to-browser plugins. Ionic utilizes Cordova as its core tool to enable the creation of complex and custom apps, emphasizing the need for more developers to contribute to the Cordova ecosystem.