The news that Adobe are bringing flash to the iPhone – albeit indirectly – isn’t exactly new, but as both a flash developer and an iPhone developer, we certainly have a unique perspective on the matter.
First, a little bit of background; Adobe has announced that the upcoming Flash CS5 will allow developers to export their work as native iPhone apps, which can then be submitted to Apple for approval. This isn’t some nebulous goal that Adobe is aiming for either; several apps have already been approved by Apple and are available for purchase on the app store.
So we know it works, and we’ve tried out one of the apps – We here at Matmi grabbed Chroma Circuit and gave it a play, and it seemed to work pretty well – and all we’re left with is the question of ‘now what?’
We’d pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren’t going to be using Flash on the iPhone. Sure, we were annoyed at first, but we’re nothing if not adaptable, and the success of Monster Pinball is a testament to that. However, this does present us with some interesting possibilities as we still do a lot of work in Flash and an opportunity to get that work to a wider audience, like the millions of people with an iPhone or iPod Touch, is an exciting prospect.
But you’ve got to imagine that plenty of other developers have had the same idea, and that’s what worries us the most, that the market will be flooded with low-quality apps and finding anything decent will be like finding a needle in a haystack. The flash apps will still have to go through Apple first of course, but our other concern is that the influx will cause approval to grind to almost a complete standstill with the sheer volume of apps to be looked at.
But on the other hand, there are plenty of flash developers who are doing some very impressive work. Games like the charming Scary Girl or the hypnotic Auditorium deserve to be seen by as many people as possible, and this is an opportunity for such developers to reach an audience that might never otherwise have seen their games.
It’s an exciting time to be a flash developer and it’s an exciting time to be an iPhone developer too.
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