New App Store Dev Agreement Kills Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler

Courtesy of John Gruber, here’s a tasty little morsel from the new iPhone OS 4.0 SDK App Store Dev Agreement:

Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited.

Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone program? It just bit the big one.

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Giraldo
This is a bummer. I guess they are weeding out the non-ObjC programmers from the App Store. Does this include PhoneGap?
Mike D
Wow. This article appeared to contain no information when viewing from the main site, but when I opened the actual post by itself, I was shocked that my initial judgement/guess was indeed 100% true.
Since I have no clue what this compiler is, a little info outside of me aearchig would be helpful. Or maybe even some insight. Or opinions.
Zach
Could be bad for the mono touch project too.
Giraldo
Basically the libraries/frameworks that allow you to program in another language and either translate and/or compile into an iPhone/iPad/iPod app. The ones I know of are:
- Adobe iPhone Compiler (AS3)
- ELIPS Studio (AS3)
- Corona (LUA)
- PhoneGap (Javascript)
And I know there are a few others out there.
James T.
Flash? Wasn’t that a character from All-American Publications back in the Golden Age of Comic Books, circa 1940?
http://www.easywpconfig.com Tom Bodet
Wow, bummer, sounds like its time to bit the bullet and learn xcode, you think apple will publish a book that makes any sense? or will it be some convoluted, tribal gobble gook, that no one but the guy who writes, stereo instructions can understand.,
http://ObamaPacman.com ObamaPacman
@Tom Bodet,
There are plenty of books / documentations / guides. How else do you think there are > 150,000 apps?
Samuel
This kills Unity as well. Sad.
mongo
I’m a little confused. Is this all to attack Flash further? Does the compiler process create headaches for the iPhone OS? I guess I can’t figure out if this is to secure the iPhone OS from buggy code, or two act as a bombing run on Flash…
brandonthedeveloper
@mongo – Flash exports the compiled .SWF file directly to an ARM binary that can be read by the iphone. Unless Apple can embed some type of digital signature that shows the app was not created using some third party IDE like Flash, I’m not sure what they can actually do about it. There have been iPhone games created in Flash in the app store since last October.
My question is this – I see the quote is coming from the iPhone OS 4 SDK agreement. Will Apple continue to allow its partners to create their applications for the iPad using Adobe AIR (same process)?
I think if AIR can be used to create content for 19 of the 20 or so tablet manufacturers coming out in the next year, creating content specifically for the iPad is going to get old real quick.
http://tetontech.wordpress.com tetontech
This is a partial quote. Hybrid applications like QuickConnect, PhoneGap, etc. are not affected.
charli
actually the agreement, or at least the part quote, says nothing about prohibiting the Flash complier, or any other, at all.
Apple is insisting that all apps be written in C+ etc completely. Rather than some other language with a translation layer.
IF the Flash to iphone is just slapping on another layer to translate a Flash app to work on the iphone OS, yeah it’s gone. But if it is actually recoding the app into the appropriate language completely then it should be fine.