The battle between Apple and Adobe Systems over Flash on the iPhone and iPad appears to have reached a turning point. On Tuesday, an Adobe product manager said his company will stop development on a tool that turns Flash applications into native apps for the iPhone and iPad.
The tool is part of Creative Suite 5, Adobe’s massive package of its major products that is scheduled for release on Monday. Adobe product manager Mike Chambers, in a post Tuesday on his blog, said the company is “not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.” In other words, Adobe’s tool for adapting Flash for the iPhone and iPad is now an orphan.
A ‘Frightening Move’
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has continually disparaged Flash, saying, among other things, that it was too slow for his company’s mobile devices. In his blog post, Chambers specifically noted that the iPhone packager tool in CS5 proved “there is no technical reason that Flash can’t run on the iPhone,” and “well performing” content can be created with Flash for the iPhone and iPad.
Apple recently modified its Software Developers Kit (SDK) license in a way that forbids cross-platform compilers. Such tools allow a developer to create an application for one platform and then recompile it for another. Some industry observers took this to be a direct shot at Adobe’s efforts to allow conversion of Flash apps into native iPhone or iPad apps.
Adobe was obviously not happy about this. On an official company blog, The Flash Blog,
Adobe Technology Evangelist Lee Brimelow wrote earlier this month that Apple “won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them.” He called this a “frightening move” that could not have any other reason but to seek “tyrannical control over developers.”
Brimelow, who posted a note…