Apple a little over a week ago Apple essentially banned iPhone apps from the app store that were created with the upcoming Adobe CS Flash to iPhone app converter. Details here.
Amidst a huge uproar in the development community and Adobe’s public complaints Apple took stand and didn’t change it’s policy claiming such applications may not be as fast and stable as native applications written in Apple’s development environment.
I guess the CS5 Flash to iPhone converter is still useful if somebody wants to release an app for jailbroken iPhones, but clearly the exclusion from the app store is a huge blow for Adobe.
Flash always performed poorly on OS X and was never supported on the iPhone platform. It was kind of expected that Apple will not allow the converted apps into their stores. I think Adobe took a huge risk putting effort and resources into the development of this converter without any prior assurance from Apple.
Now Adobe’s Principal Product Manager for developer relations put an end to the story saying they will still release the feature for CS5 even if the apps created with it will not be allowed into the iTunes Store. However, they will not develop the feature in the future and will focus on Android instead. This was a good move.
If I had a say in Adobe’s direction, before anything else I would concentrate on making sure Flash on OS X is fast and stable. Then, implement Flash to run on iPhone within a custom browser and release it for jailbroken iPhones to demonstrate how well it can perform. This would prove without doubt that Flash has a future on the iPhone platform.
