Unity and Adobe praise Apple middleware climb-down

Dev tool makers are celebrating Apple's apparent about-face on the use of third party software for the creation of iPhone games.

Apple announced the relaxation of its much-criticised restrictions on middleware last night, together with new guidelines for developers seeking App Store approval.

the change means games made with the Unity engine or created in Adobe's Flash can be allowed on the mobile store, as long as they have been exported fully to iOS and do not require the downloading of any further code.

"At Unity we applaud this move by Apple," said Unity CEO David Helgason. "We are all about enabling people with the best tools imaginable so they can make awesome products.

"Apple has always been primarily focused on providing superior products to end users, and Unity games have indeed been continuously approved throughout the last months. However, we are very happy for all those devs who can now join the party."

Helgasson will go into more detail on the implications of Apple's about-face on the Unity blog later today.

Meanwhile, Adobe published a statement in response to what appears to be a ceasefire in Apple's cold war with the Flash format.

"Apple's announcement today that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe's Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool.

"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."

The legitimisation of Packager and similar conversion tools is expected to result in a new flood of submissions to the App Store -although the tightened approval rules will likely make limit the number that make it through.

"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," added Adobe - highlighted that Apple devices would still refuse to run any Flash content that hadn't been exported to iOS format.