For iPhone users who’ve been wondering whether their devices will support Flash technology for Web video and games anytime soon, the answer is finally here, straight from Steve Jobs: No.

In a detailed offensive against the technology owned by Adobe Systems Inc., Apple’s CEO wrote Thursday that Flash has too many bugs, drains batteries too quickly and is too oriented to personal computers to work on the iPhone and iPad.

Adobe is no longer investing in iPhone-based Flash development, Adobe principal product manager Mike Chambers wrote in a Tuesday blog post.

The move comes after Apple put out new draft of its iPhone developer program license, which banned private APIs and required apps to be written in Objective-C, C, C , or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine.

“Essentially, this has the effect of restricting applications built with a number of technologies, including Unity, Titanium, MonoTouch, and Flash CS5,” Chamber wrote. “While it appears that Apple may selectively enforce the terms, it is our belief that Apple will enforce those terms as they apply to content created with Flash CS5.”

Adobe will still provide the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5, but the company is “not currently planning any additional investments in that feature,” he said.

Apple Inc has accepted distribution of Opera Software’s Internet browser for its iPhone after a long review, opening a new and potentially lucrative market it has so far closely guarded.

There are numerous versions of Apple’s own browser on App Store, but Norway-based Opera is the first rival to get access to iPhone.

Apple just announced WebKit2, a rework of the WebKit engine that powers Chrome and Safari. This new version of WebKit incorporates the same style of split-process model that provides stability in Chrome, but built directly into the framework so all browsers based upon WebKit will be able to gain the same level of sandboxing and stability.

A well-known hacker of the iPhone, who previously defeated Apple’s restrictions on developers, has claimed in a video to have hacked the iPad. Just a day after release, the hacker, who goes by “MuscleNerd” online, said that he has gained root access to the iPad, a process known as “ jailbreaking.”

Eager customers intent on being among the first owners of this new class of gadgetry stood in long lines across the country Saturday. They seemed willing to buy first - and discover uses for the iPad later.

In some ways, it was reminiscent of the lines and hoopla surrounding the 2007 launch of the first iPhone. The difference: People knew then that the iPhone would replace their existing cell phone, an appliance that has become a must-have for everyone from uber-geeks to stay-at-home moms.

With the iPad, which fits somewhere between phone and computer, Apple must convince people who already have smart phones, laptops, e-book readers, set-top boxes and home broadband connections that they need another device that serves many of the same purposes.

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it released an application to allow its Kindle e-books to be read on Apple Inc Mac computers.

Amazon, maker of the popular Kindle e-reader, is trying to cement its leading position as the top maker of e-readers — and distributor of e-books — by making content available on other devices.

The move comes just two weeks ahead of the launch of Apple’s new iPad tablet, a device with broader functionality than the Kindle, but which includes an e-reader application. The iPad is seen as a strong challenge to Amazon.

According to AppleInsider, Apple will finally be bringing a “full-on solution” to multi-tasking with iPhone OS 4.0 which is set to debut this summer. Presumably that means that third-party apps will finally be allowed to run in the background on the phone. The sources were scant on details about how it would remedy performance, battery life, and security issues, but they did say that the multi-tasking would use an interface similar to that in the Mac versions of OS X.

At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple.

The company did not name the offending factories, or say where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China.

Apple also has factories working for it in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the United States.

Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer underage. “In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment,” Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers.

When Jason Kincaid tried out the iPhone app online music streaming startup Grooveshark built and showed off in July 2009, he wrote that it was great but that he “wouldn’t expect this to pop up in the App Store any time soon”. He was right on both counts.

Grooveshark now says it has given up on its ambitions to get approved for the official App Store, claiming that Apple has been “ritually rejecting” the app for “primary selfish reasons”. We’ve heard that song before.

The startup says it spent many months developing the iPhone application, and on occasion went months without a hearing a peep out of Cupertino.

Denied access to the App Store, Grooveshark decided to head underground and is today releasing the app on Cydia, enabling people who have jailbroken their iPhone and iPod touch devices to enjoy it – and it is actually pretty cool.

Owners of unlocked iPhones who want to upgrade to the recently released OS 3.1.3 and want to retain the ability to use whatever Sim meets their needs can now do so. The iPhone Dev Team have released a suitable version of its PwnageTool utility.

The Team cautioned against updating. The iPhone OS update is claimed to improve the accuracy of the iPhone 3GS’ battery level readout, and if you’ve not noticed any untoward readings, the Team say, “there’s no reason to update to 3.1.3″.

If you must, PwnageTool 3.1.5 is what you need.

Apple’s iPhone is vulnerable to exploits that allow an attacker to spoof web pages even when they’re protected by the SSL, or secure sockets layer, protocol, a security researcher said.

The fault lies in a feature that makes it easy to configure large numbers of iPhones so they meet an organization’s IT policies, said Charlie Miller, a researcher at Independent Security Evaluators. Not only does the provisioning feature work over the internet, it can be tricked into accepting malicious configuration files.