Many have decried the lack of a Flash plug-in for the iPhone and for coders learning Objective C has been a right of passage. But that was then, this is now. In a game-changing move, Adobe recently announced that when Flash Professional CS5 ships it will export native ActionScript apps to the iPhone.
“The tooling update allows developers to use Flash technologies to develop content for iPhone and iPod touch, devices that were previously closed to them. Developers can write new code or reuse existing web content to build applications for iPhone. Because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes,—Adobe AIR and Flash Player—it also gives developers a way to more easily target other mobile and desktop environments.” (continues here)
Although (thank God) this won’t make building iPhone apps as easy as, say, laser printers made desktop publishing back in the day, it’s still huge. How big? I’d say fasten your seat belts and get ready to watch App store sales go from two billion served to four almost overnight.
