Home/ Questions/Q 577203
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-13T14:07:42+00:00

From what I understand, Apple has banned the Flash runtime on the iPhone because

  • 0

From what I understand, Apple has banned the Flash runtime on the iPhone because Apple doesn’t want an alternative runtime environment to that which Apple provides via their own tools. Allowing a Flash runtime, according to Apple, would allow developers to circumvent application update policies and other controls which Apple has put in place. And at this time, Adobe has not chosen to build tools to statically compile apps created in Flash.

My further understanding is that .NET apps created via MonoTouch are statically precompiled and hit the iPhone as native code vs. running inside the .NET common language runtime (CLR), which Apple would surely disallow. Since .NET code is not executing in Microsoft’s runtime but rather natively on the iPhone CPU, Apple isn’t complaining.

My questions are:

  1. Am I correct about why Apple allows .NET-developed applications on the iPhone?

  2. Is one vendor’s precompiled, native code on the iPhone (or any platform I suppose) distinguishable from any other? In other words, is native code that’s produced by MonoTouch indistinguishable from native code produced by compiled Objective C code? Is the source of the native code totally opaque?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As you just said, Apple is not “allowing” .NET to run on the iPhone – whether an application was developed in MonoTouch or written in Cocoa or COBOL or whatever doesn’t matter; it only matters what it is compiled to. It could be written in JavaScript and it wouldn’t matter.

    If I write something in English and then translate it to French, can a French reader tell the original version was written in English? Maybe, probably not, and it’s all up to the characteristics of the translation, not the reader. All Apple requires is the version you give them is written in French. Up to that point it makes no difference.

    A logical extension of this is that you could, in theory, write a compiler for Flash files that creates self-contained iPhone binaries. If developing in Flash is what’s important to you. (This may or may not have already been done This has already been done.)

    • 0