Adobe has announced it will halt development of a CS5 feature that allows Flash developers to port their apps to the iPhone.
The stable-door decision comes a week after Apple effectively banned apps created with Adobe’s iPhone packager from the App Store. Adobe will continue to offer the packager in CS5 but will not spend any more time developing the feature.
“To be clear, during the entire development cycle of Flash CS5, the feature complied with Apple’s licensing terms,” writes Adobe’s Flash product manager, Mike Chambers, on his blog. “However, as developers for the iPhone have learned, if you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at anytime, and for seemingly any reason.”
As developers for the iPhone have learned, if you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at anytime, and for seemingly any reason
In what’s becoming an increasingly bitter battle between Adobe and Apple. Chambers accuses the iPhone maker of railroading developers. “The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development,” Chambers claims. “The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. It wants to tie developers down to its platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms.”
Adobe will instead focus its development on Google Android, which this week became the first mobile OS to support Adobe Flash Player 10.1. “We are at the beginning of a significant change in the industry, and I believe that ultimately open platforms will win out over the type of closed, locked down platform that Apple is trying to create,” Chambers concludes.
Apple was unavailable for comment at the time of publication, but in a statement sent to CNet.com, Apple accused Adobe of running a closed shop. “Someone has it backwards – it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary,” said spokeswoman Trudy Muller.
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