Saturday, September 11, 2010

App authorization process open following long Apple/Flash feud

There is an end to the Apple/Flash feud. This is the feud that began last spring. Apple made a statement on Thursday that shocked most of the world. All of the heavy limits on tools developers are allowed to use on iPad and iPhone applications could be relaxed quite a bit here soon. Apple also explained its app approval guidelines could be made public soon, contributing to the shock. Apple didn’t say that Flash was going to be used now in Steve Jobs’ statement, however now Adobe’s common app toolkit is available. As soon as news reported Apple’s announcement, Adobe stock skyrocketed.

Info about the Apple/Flash feud

Apple made a list of approved languages that iPhone and iPad apps might be made on, which is why last April, the Apple-Flash player fight started. PC World reports that Apple’s policy excluded Adobe Flash CS5 Flash Packager for iPhone and iPad. Flash Packager for iPhone was the anchor feature of Adobe CS5. It was intended to make Adobe’s Flash a cross-platform toolkit for the iPhone’s other successful platforms. Then there was Steve Jobs. He thought that was a terrible plan. That was before of course. All was better Thursday. Now developers can use Flash to build an app that runs on both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, while only having to publish it once.

Process for approving apps made public

The Apple app approval process has been changed a bit. It also is available to the public now. The Apple App Store Review Guidelines used to be secret rules that decided on whether or not the iPhone or iPad would allow the developer’s app to be used. Wired reports that uncertainty about App Store approval has been keeping lots of top flight development talent from creating iPhone and iPad apps and leading to a proliferation of “fart apps” (junk applications). Thursday excited many developers. This was because developers couldn’t know if they had done something wrong in the app until it came back from Apple rejected. There was so much wasted time as a result of this. Money was wasted by it as well. Programmers just want to know what the rules are, although what they’re doesn’t really matter, says Wired.

The reason Apple decided something else

Apple didn’t say why it plans to make App Store Review Guidelines public along with letting app development be done by third party tools such as Adobe Flash. Bloggers are making decisions on what they think happened. Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune is just one of these people. Developer feedback, regulation and competition are all possible opportunities. DeWitt says these are probably the most popular. Since Apple typically makes developers do no matter what it wants, he didn’t think it’d be the option of feedback. Apple is probably confronted by new Android tablets and all the Android-powered smartphones. The Apple/Flash feud has caused an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission on Apple. It is investigating the ban on cross-development platforms by Apple. Adobe, which complained to the FTC about Apple, appears to be getting what it wanted.

More on this topic

PC World

pcworld.com/article/205114/apple_lifts_app_store_approval_shroud_for_developers.html?tk=hp_new

Wired

wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/apple-lifts-app-store-flash-ban-publishes-app-review-rules/

Fortune

tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/09/why-did-apple-lift-its-ban-on-flash/



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