That sure didn’t take long. Almost immediately after Apple Inc. eased a series of restrictions on developers and opened a path for Flash-based creations to make their way onto the iOS platform, Adobe Systems Inc. revived its Packager for iPhone.
The tool, which Adobe built as a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool, was essentially abandoned after Apple, and particularly its CEO Steve Jobs, lambasted Flash as a technology for mobile and said it had no place in the iOS environment.
“This feature was created to enable Flash developers to quickly and easily deliver applications for iOS devices. The feature is available for developers to use today in Flash Professional CS5, and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases,” Adobe wrote on its blog following the news.
“This is great news for developers and we’re hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store. We do want to point out that Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.”
Based on Apple’s rather public dismissal of Flash, it seems unlikely that Apple will make a complete about-face and allow Flash to run on the Safari browser for iOS devices. But to be sure, there is legion of Flash developers that are hoping otherwise.