Adobe lashes Apple for Flash-free iPhones

Paul Nesbitt

Adobe is going out of its way to make sure that everyone knows who's to blame for there being no Flash on the iPhone.

Apple's low regard for Adobe's Flash means that if you browse a site with Flash in it, your iPhone will not playback Flash content.

Now Adobe is going out of its way to make sure that everyone knows who's to blame. Load a page with Flash content and you may see a new message from Adobe, which reads 'Apple restricts use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod touch.'

The tone of the message certainly ups the tetch war between Adobe and Apple, which has banned Flash because it claims that the mobile version of the Flash Player is slow, eats up processing power and is not fully-featured.

But Adobe claimed that its website had registered vistors from iPhone users looking for the so-far non-existent Flash plug-in for their iPhone.

Last month Adobe seemed to have made some progress when it announced that it developed technology that will enable software programmers to convert Flash applications (running in a web browser) into native iPhone applications, effectively sneaking Flash applications onto the iPhone. Adobe is hoping that a lot of games developers, who create mobile games in Flash will use Flash Professional CS5, when it is finally released to convert their games into iPhone games.

Apple did not comment.