Apple, Adobe At Odds Over Adobe CS5 iPhone Compiler

Not long after the iPhone OS 4.0 release yesterday, Apple made a change to its developer agreement that fired a shot across the bow of Adobe and its Flash platform:

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

With the above language Apple has restricted developers from using tools such as Adobe’s iPhone compiler, intended to speed up development and deployment of iPhone applications.

For its part Adobe has made a plain statement in its latest Form 10-Q filing:

“to the extent new releases of operating systems or other third-party products, platforms or devices, such as the Apple iPhone or iPad, make it more difficult for our products to perform, and our customers are persuaded to use alternative technologies, our business could be harmed.”

With the above statement, it remains to be seen what Adobe’s next move will be, as iPhone developers must now operate within a stricter set of guidelines for application development.