For how long could have Apple closed the doors for wider, open app development. Adobe sued Apple, the FTC seems to have forced Apple to open the flood gates.
With Adobe CS5, adobe had made possible to let developers write iPhone apps on windows using Flash CS 5 builder. Days before the release, Apple announced iOS4 which claimed that 3rd party tools will be kicked out. Of course, Adobe was’t happy with the decision and complained to FTC. Apple’s announcement today seems to be undoing the change made in iOS4. They have finally lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines, which has direct implications for Adobe’s Packager for iPhone. After hearing the announcement, Adobe has resumed development work on this feature for future releases.
The goodness of this news is not limited to Adobe alone, it goes much farther than that. This is, in general, great news for developers.
Third-party development tools, including those made by Adobe, allow developers to write apps once and then programmatically create variations for multiple platforms. Last spring Apple changed its development agreement to force developers to write apps for iOS devices using its own programming language “Objective-C”, arguing that third-party tools made apps that weren’t as powerful and secure as they should be.
This could be a case of an App Store reviewer stepping out of line and making a mistake.
Many are expecting that lots of rejected apps will get a second chance. The hottest rumors are surrounded around Google voice coming to iOS. But there’s no official statement from Google as of now.
“We currently offer Google Voice mobile apps for Blackberry and Android, and we offer an HTML5 web app for the iPhone. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”
In an unofficial tweet, Sean Kovacs, developer of google voice for iPhone did see higher hopes to get Google Voice on iPhone anytime soon.
Is FTC Pushing Apple?
The FTC reportedly opened an investigation into the ban in spring 2010, and, FTC attorneys have been talking over the summer to app developers, about whether the ban makes it less likely that they will make apps for competing platforms such as Google’s Android mobile OS and Windows Phone 7 OS, among others.
The FTC was also reportedly interested in Apple banning Adobe’s Flash, but story has been rumored that interest “might just be a red herring” and the FTC was really concerned about the developer rules Apple had been living with.
It could be the time that Apple is feeling the heat from Google Android and now realizing the need of Openness, or it could be a legal Push from FTC. We’ll know soon.
We write about Latest in tech, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Gadgets, Open Source, Programming. Grab them@taranfx on Twitter or below:
loading...
loading...