How will developers react to Apple's restrictive iPhone moves?

The day after Apple detailed what's coming with iPhone 4.0, I've seen a couple of different kinds of articles and blog posts surface.

Some are focusing on whether Apple's decision to finally support multitasking and how that could make things even tougher for Microsoft, which has gone public with the company's decision not to provide multitasking in the first version of its Windows Phone 7 OS. (I can't help but wonder whether Microsoft may reverse that decision just in the nick of time for holiday 2010....)

Others are focusing on Apple's seeming attempt to restrict what kinds of tools developers use to write iPhone applications. I saw a few tweets about this on April 8, and more today, April 9. In short, Apple looks to be dictating which languages can be used to develop iPhone applications, at least in part, to stop developers from creating apps that can support Flash and potentially circumvent its app store.

The Mono folks, who seem to be directly in Apple's crosshairs given their .Net language support, are taking a surprisingly calm approach -- at least publicly. The Mono community seems to be taking a wait-and-see attitude, as articulated in this blog post -- as to whether Apple's pronouncements will end up resulting in a ban of MonoTouch for the iPhone/iPad. (I don't know whether this is a Novell-approved post, but Mono founder Miguel de Icaza pointed to it via Twitter today.)

Adobe is taking a less sanguine view. One Adobe evangelist, Lee Brimlowe, was quite pointed in his criticisms on the TheFlashBlog.

"By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms. Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion....

"Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies."

Brimlowe ends the post with "Go screw yourself, Apple."

(Thanks to RichfromBechtle for the pointer to the Adobe post.)

I'm curious how developers think Apple's moves may affect smartphone development, if at all, going forward. [poll = "39"]

I can't believe I'm actually rooting for Adobe in this one (as one of my Twitter followers, @holyspidoo, said first). What's your take? Who's looking evil, now, mobile developers?