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Adobe re-plans Flash tool as Apple relaxes app rules

by Sarah Griffiths on 10 September 2010, 11:41

Tags: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)

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The war is over?

Adobe has claimed Apple's rare climb down to relax rules for the development of iOS apps is "great news for developers" and plans to roll out future versions of Flash Professional.

The lifting of Apple's oft criticised stringent rules has meant the previously banned Adobe Flash to iPhone porting app will become available to developers once more.

Adobe's blog said: "Apple's announcement that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe's Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool."

The feature was created to let Flash developers make iOS apps and can be used in Flash professional CS5 but Adobe said it "will now resume development work on this feature for future releases."

Adobe abandoned the development of Packager after Apple changed its app development rules in April, which some commentators saw as a deliberate ploy to hit Adobe and sparked a war of words between the two companies.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been less than complimentary about the quality of Adobe's Flash and reportedly said it had "major technical drawbacks," while Adobe hit back accusing the firm of "...wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe," before telling Apple to go screw itself.

Adobe finally walked away from the spat last month and said it had made its point and has ‘moved on' while telling Apple its ‘doors are open' if it reverses its Flash policy.

Adobe said Apple's u-turn on its app development tools rules: "is great news for developers and we're hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store."

While Apple's move may be a step in the right direction its Flash ban still means websites using Flash will still not work on Apple devices.

"We do want to point out that Apple's restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place," Adobe said.