The Apple climb down on Adobe Flash began with the words, ‘The App Store has revolutionized the way mobiles applications are developed and distributed,’ which no-one doubted, but these are hardly the worlds of a company that has changed its mind, more of a company that has had its mind changed for it.
If you haven’t heard the news yet Apple has altered its App Store license in a way that is being interpreted as inviting Adobe back into the fold, and saying that as long as apps written in Flash are compiled ahead of time and don’t require downloading any Adobe code on the fly, they will qualify. Adobe was not mentioned by name.
Apple says that it has listened to its developers, but why, it never did before? No we think that this isn’t even the effect of the impending review by the FCC on Apple’s App Store practices. No it’s the fact that Flash has not been crushed by its decision and is enjoying a new life as an ally of Android. And that’s either already hurting Apple or the company thinks it has the potential to in the future.
Apple said it was, ”relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.’
The Apple animosity towards Adobe was so strong that it wiped some share value off Adobe for a while, and that was corrected with a surge since the announcement. The spat had led to Steve Jobs listing all the things that were wrong with Adobe Flash, and naming it as the reason for most crashes on the Apple devices which either have or used to have Flash. The whole debate will soon be forgotten and Flash will make iOS that much more competitive with Android, and it may even find its way into Apple TV, making that a stronger platform, even though the fight against Android is clearly one that Apple cannot win.