Fun fact nobody remembers: back in the day Adobe built a feature where you could build flash source to an iphone app - you hit "publish" and an .ipa came out. It worked fine, people made apps, they got accepted to the app store, users used them, etc.

Then a day or so before that feature left beta, apple added a vague new clause to their app store agreement, which made no sense on paper but whose obvious purpose was to disallow flash apps. They then unpublished all the existing flash apps for violating that clause. Adobe quietly cancelled the app publish feature, and a few months later apple quietly removed the clause.

What was the clause?

It was something like that the app must have been "originally written" in certain approved programming languages. It basically targeted cross-compilation, but it was written so vaguely that on paper it appeared to even disallow native iOS apps if they began as a port from some other language.

There was briefly a kerfuffle about it, because various people were using other non-flash cross-compilation tools (xamarin? etc), and they worried their apps would get removed as well. But IIRC apple never actually enforced the clause, other than to remove existing flash-based apps and reject new ones.

But it did cause vendors of cross-compilers to lay of dozens of staff as the clause killed their business (Source: I work with someone who was laid off because of the clause)

I don’t recall Apple unpublishing my AIR apps. One of mine was among the first secretly submitted before Adobe revealed the feature publicly. However, I definitely remember after Apple added the new clause, when I needed to submit updates, those were stuck in approval limbo for many, many months. Then, suddenly, they all got approved in a flurry and there was never an issue again.

Adobe AIR is actually still available today (now maintained by Harman through an agreement with Adobe), and it can still compile native iOS apps that can be submitted to the App Store. This feature was never removed, and is still maintained to be compatible with new iPhones.

And if you tried any sites that used flash on an Android (early days when you could for a while) you'd understand why.

No keyboard: which broke most games.

No mouse: touch is not the same and hard to fake mouse controls with touch while supporting pan or zoom.

Small screen: flash was designed for bigger screens and everything was too small or needed zoom.

Flash wanted to control its event/animation loop: battery life was drained quickly even for basic content.

Mobile didn't kill Flash.

You see the same UI issues when controlling a Remote Desktop from a phone screen. Just difficult.

Not only it was possible, it has available during the last years from Flash.

Many Flash haters have no clue that before Unity and friends many of the first generation games on iOS were actually AOT compiled Flash games, despite Apple.