There was an Apple/Flash fight that started last spring. Apple made an announcement on Thursday that shocked most of the world. All of the heavy limits on tools developers are allowed to use on iPad and iPhone applications can be relaxed quite a bit here soon. Apple added an aftershock to its statement, stating that it would make its mysterious app approval guidelines public. Steve Job’s made the statement without really discussing Flash. Of course, the Flash app toolkit is within the app process at present. Adobe can thank Apple for sending its stock soaring on the news.
Apple/Flash feud info
There is one reason why the Apple/Flash feud started last April. This is because Apple said only select languages were allowed to have iPhone and iPad apps made on them. Apple’s policy made it so Adobe Flash CS5 Flash Packager couldn’t be used on the iPhone and iPad. This comes from PC World. Flash Packager for iPhone was the anchor feature of Adobe CS5. It was made for one reason. It was supposed to be a cross platform toolkit for other iPhone platforms as Adobe Flash. Steve Jobs didn’t like that idea. That has changed. It was different before. Thursday was the day things changed. It was all better. Now developers can use Flash to build an app that runs on both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, while only having to publish it once.
Process for approving apps made public
Apple’s draconian app approval process has not only been modified, it is being made public. Apple is publishing its App Store Review Guidelines, a formerly secret set of rules determining whether a developer’s app is approved for the iPhone or iPad. As outlined by Wired, “fart apps” or junk applications, were becoming increasingly more as the App Store approval kept flight development talent from making any iPhone and iPad apps. Developers had no idea if they had done something wrong in an app until they received a rejection from Apple, until Thursday. Months of toil and thousands of dollars might be flushed down the drain. But Wired contends that developers do not care what the rules are, as long as they know what they’re.
The reason Apple changed
Apple will open app development to Adobe Flash and other third-party tools and make App Store Review Guidelines public — but the company didn’t say why. Bloggers have been making decisions on what they think happened. Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune is just one of these people. The leading theories, as outlined by DeWitt, are developer feedback, competition and regulation. It was not because of feedback he says. This is because Apple usually does no matter what it wants and does not care about others. Competition from Android-powered smartphones and a coming wave of Android tablets no doubt makes Apple feel threatened. The Federal Trade Commission has also been investigating Apple’s ban on cross-development platforms which happened with the Apple/Flash feud. Adobe has received exactly what it planned from Apple.
Find more details on this subject
PC World
pcworld.com/article/205114/apple_lifts_app_store_approval_shroud_for_developers.html?tk=hp_new
Wired
wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/apple-lifts-app-store-flash-ban-publishes-app-review-rules/
Fortune
tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/09/why-did-apple-lift-its-ban-on-flash/
