Adobe Responds to Apple’s New Rules

Yesterday, seemingly out of the blue, Apple issued a statement saying it will ease up restrictions for development tools used to create iOS party apps. Now, Adobe has reacted with a statement of its own, calling Apple’s decision “great news for developers”.

Here’s a short history: back in April Apple had banned developers from using Flash to build iOS applications, after which Adobe said it would no longer invest in the Flash CS5 feature that lets developers create Flash apps for the iOS platform.

Now, after Apple has taken a step back and lifted most of the restrictions, Adobe will continue to develop this feature. From Adobe’s statement: “Apple’s announcement today that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool. This feature was created to enable Flash developers to quickly and easily deliver applications for iOS devices. The feature is available for developers to use today in Flash Professional CS5, and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases.”

Of course, if all this hubbub made you hopeful about seeing Flash inside a browser on an iOS device, it’s not happening, at least not in the foreseeable future. Adobe points out that “Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.” So, it’s good news for developers, who can once again safely use Flash to create iPhone apps, knowing they have support from Adobe and that their apps won’t get banned by Apple. But the “Flash on iOS” saga may not be over just yet.

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