Any iPhone users with lingering thoughts of finally running Flash video and applications had their hopes well and truly dashed last week.

In mid April, a change to Apple’s terms and conditions for the iPhone and iPad software development kits restricted the number of software tools available to developers creating applications for the Apple platform. This meant applications ported to iPhone and iPad using Adobe’s forthcoming Creative Suite 5 would be rejected under the new terms. Adobe confirmed the Flash CS5 software would be released regardless and it was up to Apple to “allow or disallow” the applications according to their terms and conditions.

However, in the past week, the issue has escalated further with Apple’s Steve Jobs writing an open letter to Adobe, criticising what he calls a “closed platform” that is “designed for PCs using mice” and not the modern, touch-screen handsets that Apple have bestowed upon us all. The letter is quite scathing and in some parts even hypocritical given some of Apple’s practices.

Adobe’s Ken Lynch has since responded to Steve Job’s post stating that Apple’s stance has forced Adobe to “shift focus away from Apple's iPhone and iPad devices for Flash Player” and concentrate on optimising Flash for Google, Microsoft, Nokia, RIM (Blackberry) and Palm mobile devices. Adobe is rolling out Flash Player 10.1 on Android devices in May with a general release scheduled for June.

With a new iPhone expected in the summer, it will be interesting to see how this one pans out. Will Apple persist with the ‘open’ standards it has set or will a compromise be reached allowing Flash to run on the devices in the future? It certainly doesn’t look promising at the moment but never say never. Apple and Adobe have worked together successfully in the past and there is no reason they can’t work out a solution in this case.

Ross Hamill - Senior Account Manager

References:
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/04/20/on-adobe-flash-cs5-and-iphone-applications/
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/moving_forward.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5