Adobe has come up with a way to let developers write Flash applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices, even without the support of Apple. Adobe has been trying to work with Apple for more than a year to get its Flash Player software running on Apple’s products, but has said it needs more cooperation from Apple to get the work done. It has now come up with something of a work-around. Flash Professional CS5 will include an option for developers to take the code they wrote for devices that do include Flash Player, compile it to run as a native, stand-alone application on the iPhone, and sell it through Apple’s App Store.
So, designers use Flash to enable web sites to, in theory, be used equally well on any platform that has the Flash plugin. The reality, of course, is different but that’s been gone into enough times. But, if you’re going to make an app for the iPhone, and you have to submit it to Apple, why would you use this instead of coding a native app? Flash is primarily for web applications, not native programs. Further, what’s to stop Apple from rejecting all apps made with this Flash compiler? It’ll be pretty obvious that none of the controls are native and that none of the UI guidelines would be followed, not to mention if the app crawls like a sloth as all non-Windows versions of Adobe’s flash do.
Just like the reason for MonoTouch, not everyone wants to code in Objective-C. People have existing skillsets that they would rather use than learn a new language/platform.
Hopefully common sense and the FCC. From the article, you can download 7 example Flash games from the Apple App Store that are already approved and available.
I would assume the native-ness of the controls will be left up to the designer. Though they won’t be Apple’s native controls, there is nothing magical about them that can’t be replicated.
Instead of implying that the apps will be slow, you could go try out the released ones and see if you can actually back up your assumption.
I tried the free ones – Red Hood, Trading Stuff, and the Cockroach thing.
On my 3GS, trading stuff had seriously chuggy scrolling, so I’m sure its *great* (not) on an ipod touch or iphone 3G.
Red hood ran fine but had pretty much nothing moving on screen, and the cockroach game was kinda passable but u could see the transitions between levels were kinda chugging, especially compared to what u can do programming it yourself in C.
I wouldn’t expect it to take over the games market, or for your favorite flash games to run very well.
… and what is your agenda? Gee, why should anything be rejected from the AppStore? I am a REBOL user – we have our own GUI too. It is really laughable, how you ppl try to prevent Flash, by claims like “not following the guidelines”, yet you scream for webapps, which can be totally free-form, not following OS guidelines at all 🙂
I was asking questions honestly. Damn, go take your pills, ok? I think they’re wearing off.
I don’t like Apples reason, but I like the result.
Flash is a disease and should be replaced by a good open neutral standard.
But Adobe obviously will fight that from happening with all they’ve got.
A lot of free “apps” on the phone are little more than media blitz toys as part of larger promotions and media campaigns. Being able to create flash apps for the phone opens the platform up to a gazillion Flash artists and coders.
This is a great barrier being lifted by Adobe for its users, who want in on this platform and market.
What would have been cool is if Adobe had made a flash->SVG/Javascript compiler/converter.
Sure – their own proprierary flash plugin would get some competition.
But I am sure Apple would have loved it and made sure the (already exisisting) SVG support in safari was up to speed.
And Adobe could improve their position as tool-makers greatly.
There are a lot of Flash-based games out there that people might like to play. This is an easy way to get them there and they generally don’t use native controls anyway, so no one will care. Performance is the key. If they’re terrible, there will be 100 reviews with the lowest rating and that happens with plenty of native software already.
Maybe, just maybe, these developers and publishers will make enough money to learn Objective-C and do things right. It’s not a difficult language to learn.