Skipping past the long story and delving straight to the bottom line, Adobe is taking a pretty bad hit with the move of Apple to prevent developers from using the Flash compiler on Adobe’s Flash Professional CS5 software. The clause on the new license agreement for the iPhone 4.0 OS SDK goes to length to indicate to users that using third party software is not allowed, here is the clause as follows:
“3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)”.
While it does not directly name Adobe, most developers already see where this is heading.
In the meanwhile, personnel on both sides have been pretty vocal about their opinions on the matter. Adobe’s Senior Product Manager wrote a rather extensive blog about the situation and how the sudden change is affecting not only Adobe, but developers as well.
Apple on the other hand continues to attack not only the Adobe system, but also Google. It no longer comes as a surprise that Google has announced that the Android OS will be supporting the latest version of Flash –providing developers with a new alternative platform that they can go to as opposed to being stuck with Apple.
According to Apple: “HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and H264, all supported by the iPhone and iPad, which are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary.”
It looks like we will not be seeing the end of this dispute anytime soon.
Read more about the whole squabble between Adobe and Apple at the Telegraph UK.
Tags: Adobe, Apple, Apple-iPhone-4G, Apple-iPhone-OS-4, AppleiPhone, Google