Hell cools slightly as Apple backtracks and allows Flash tools

Following the longrunning and bitter debate caused by Apple banning developers from using certain thirdparty tools to develop apps (notably Flash), the company has formally announced a U turn.

"Today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year," the company says in a statement.

"In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need."

While explicitly not mentioning Flash, use of Adobe's Flash CS5 tools in development results in apps and games that are standalone, without any need to download additional code.

So after all of Steve Jobs strong opinions on the subject, Flash is now back for iOS development, although obviously still not supported in the Safari browser.

Of course, other tools such as the Unity game engine, Java, Silverlight etc that were also caught up in the ban are now cleared.

Presumably pressure from the US Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, plus EU anti trust officials may have something to do with the volte face.

Apple has also published its App Store Review Guidelines so developers can understand why apps get rejected and what to do about it should this happen.

You can read those here.

[source: Apple]