The battle of Adobe vs. Apple rages on and seems to have taken a definitive turn as Apple previewed its iPhone 4.0 last Thursday. If you’re unfamiliar with the subject, the gist of it goes something like this: Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, is not a big fan of Adobe Flash. Because of this, the iPhone is somewhat notorious for not being able to support flash, meaning that iPhone users are not able to view web pages that use flash.
In October, Adobe announced the development of Flash-to-iPhone Compiler that would basically act as an iPhone App that allowed the iPhone to be compatible with flash. On Thursday, however, a paragraph was discovered in Apple’s Developer Program License Agreement for its latest iPhone that put that notion to rest.
“Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.”
In other words, unless the Application uses Apple approved software and language, it’s not going to be approved into the App Store for use. Therefore, Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler will still be banned, and Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad will still be voluntarily unable to support flash.
What does it all mean? The increase in Internet usage from a mobile device has seen an unprecedented rise that is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Facebook alone has more than 100 million users of its Facebook Mobile site. It’s becoming more and more necessary that web developers keep compatibility between mobile device and website in mind when developing their web pages to ensure that they’re viewable by everyone, regardless of device. One thing’s for sure: this is an issue that could have serious implications for Adobe and the web development industry in the future.