It sounds like Adobe may have been as surprised as anyone else by the latest news from Apple on whether Adobe’s Flash technology will work on the iPhone.
Apple’s resistance to Flash, which powers most of the video and games on the web, had already hurt Adobe’s image, but at least the company planned to get around the iPhone’s lack of Flash support by offering a Flash-to-iPhone app converter, which has already been used for more than 100 apps in the Apple store.
But with this summer’s launch of version 4.0 of the iPhone operating system, it looks like even Adobe’s workaround might be blocked. Daring Fireball noted earlier today that the new iPhone developer’s agreement seems to nix the use of programs like Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, because it prohibits “applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool.”
Other development tools that let you build for the iPhone and other devices, such as Appcelerator’s Titanium, may be affected too, and Appcelerator says it’s still trying to figure out what this means. I asked Adobe to comment, and the company sent me this statement from spokesman Stefan Offermann (which was also tweeted):
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We are aware of the new SDK language and are looking into it. We continue to develop our Packager for iPhone OS technology, which we plan to debut in Flash CS5.
If there isn’t more clarity about this soon, it could definitely cast a pall over the launch of Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 on Monday.
