( CNN ) -- For decades -- dating back to the 1980s -- Apple and Adobe Systems have had a deeply troubled relationship . The most recent phase of their ongoing struggle has been over whether Flash ( Adobe 's hugely popular proprietary format for adding animation , video , and interactivity to web pages ) would run on Apple mobile devices . Apple has always resisted putting Flash on the iPhone , because Flash has performed notoriously poorly on Macintosh computers . But these days internet access is swiftly going mobile , and Apple 's iPhone holds the most interactivity- and video-hungry portion of the smartphone market . Apple does offer a mobile app that re-encodes YouTube Flash videos to play on the iPhone , but in general Flash elements wo n't play on Apple mobile devices . So Adobe has been trying hard to get Apple to support Flash on the iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch . It looks like Adobe has finally lost this battle . Last week Adobe Systems released Wallaby -- an experimental new drag-and-drop tool for developers that converts Flash files into HTML5 . HTML5 is an emerging web standard that can work with the fully featured browsers available on most mobile devices , including the iPhone and iPad . It allows developers to build mobile web pages that are much more interactive and multimedia-rich . ( Technically , it 's now called just HTML , but most people are still saying `` HTML5 '' to refer to the new capabilities . ) Also , HTML5 can be used to build mobile apps that work offline . As CNN Money recently explained , HTML5 web apps `` can still function in areas with no connection . Gamers , for instance , can continue playing uninterrupted even if their device loses its signal . '' In January , The New York Times reported that many online content services , including Vimeo and Flickr , are experimenting with using HTML5 to deliver video and other rich media , probably driven in part by Apple 's lack of mobile support for Flash . The Washington Post reports that Wallaby ( a program that runs on the Adobe AIR platform , which does work with Apple 's iOS mobile operating system ) `` was tested with iOS 4.2 . The only supported Webkit browsers at this time are Chrome and Safari on OSX , Windows and iOS . '' What does this mean for iPhone users ? If Wallaby becomes popular with developers , then many websites that use Flash to present interactive features or multimedia content -- anything from videos to games to simulations and more -- may suddenly start working right on the iPhone and iPad . So iPhone and iPad users will encounter fewer of those annoying blank holes on web pages where multimedia is supposed to appear . But in the big picture , if most internet access goes mobile ( as Gartner predicted will happen by 2013 ) , then there might be less and less reason for web developers to use Flash . It could be that HTML5 might become the norm , and Flash might fade into the mists of tech history . Daniel Eran Dilger predicted Adobe 's move to accommodate HTML5 almost a year ago , in his brilliant mock-biblical chronicle of the history of Adobe vs. Apple , an amazingly entertaining read . Dilger wrote : `` ... And Adobe saw four horsemen of the apocalypse ascending from the sea , the rider of the white horse was Steve Jobs and he was bent on conquest . And a second horse , red , was given to iPhone to take away market share from smartphones , and to cause phone makers to wage war and to fall upon their own swords . `` And a third horse , black , was carrying the scales of the iPod touch , and it measured out music playback from iTunes and sold many apps and starved other mobile platforms of mobile application demand . And fourth horse , pale , had a rider named iPad , which pundits called Death . And it caused famine for tablets and plague for slates and killed with a sword . And none of the horsemen used Flash . `` And Adobe frightfully woke from its vision of terrors , and realized that its days of monopolizing the web with Flash content were over . `` ... And then Adobe began building HTML5 development tools , and it charged reasonable prices and built cross-platform products and the people rejoiced and Adobe 's death was spared and it lived comfortably for many days next to Apple . `` And Steve Jobs said thank you and Adobe said no , thank you . And they all lived happily ever after . ''
Adobe 's Flash does not work on Apple 's phones or tablets . Adobe is developing an API that will convert Flash into XML . HTML5 is a new web standard aimed at working on most browsers and mobile devices .