Adobe MAX and AIR: Disappointed and Confused

Dear Adobe,

You keep telling me that you can build an AIR app and deploy it to multiple devices. So when I sat down to watch the keynotes, I expected to see an app running across multiple devices. Instead, you showed me the following:

• Touch apps that are running on a single Android tablet and “coming soon” for iPad


• Angry Birds (and others) running on the desktop, but not on a tablet or a phone

No matter how impressive your AIR app is, I only want to see your app if it’s running on multiple devices. You’re shooting yourself in the foot when you say “coming soon to other devices”. I guess next time I approach a client I’ll say, “Thanks to AIR, I can deliver this Android app and then also deliver an iPad app a few months later.”

Your Angry Birds and Unreal demos were impressive, but didn’t they belong in the “sneaks” section? Am I supposed to send my mom a link to the MAX keynote and say, “Look Mom! Angry Birds running in Flash!” She doesn’t want to watch a video of a mobile game in a browser and she doesn’t care what Flash is, she just wants to play Angry Birds on every device she has today.

I love the the vision of Flash (deploying high performance apps across multiple devices), but unfortunately the reality is very upsetting. You have no tooling for 3D, GPU is not working across desktop and mobile devices, and your “build once, deploy everywhere” message is falling flat on its face. If you would have shown me released tools for building games (physics, level editors, sprite management, etc) and Angry Birds running across desktop, Android, and iOS, that we could all take home and play, I would have given you a standing ovation. Unfortunately, MAX felt more like a message of, “Just hang on a little while longer, we’ll get there, we promise!”

All I want to see is mind-blowing demos of AIR running across multiple devices and the tools you used to make them, but instead I saw an awkward message of buying PhoneGap to support HTML apps and Flash become the new browser "console".

Fix your story. Clear your message. Deliver on your promises.

I'm still waiting...

Sincerely,
John Lindquist

Flixel on the iPad

Flixel is a popular library for creating Flash games (personally, I love it). So I was curious to see just how well it would run on an iPad with the new AIR 2.6 packager.

So I grabbed the source of Mode, threw it into my AIR for iOS tool (more info on that here), and grabbed the camcorder.

Honestly, I'm blown away by how well it ran. I didn't make any changes other than bumping up the resolution of the game to 1024x768 and changing the keyboard handlers to mouse handlers.

Watch below to judge for yourself:

Top 10 AIR 2.6 for iOS Questions

1. It takes forever to compile, am I doing something wrong?

Probably not. The compiler/packager/converter (whatever you want to call it) has to package up the entire Flash Player VM into your .ipa. So even if you're only compiling a single class, it’s still going to take a minute or two.

2. Why is my screen white?

That means you had a runtime error. Double check you’re not using RSLs or including an unsupported class (like ServerSocket).

3. Why can’t I install my .ipa on my device?

You’ve probably made a mistake with provisioning and setting up your cert to support your device. Follow the steps on the apple developer center carefully and make sure you’re using the correct target type (there are different builds for debugging, group testing, and app store).

(If your iDevice is jailbroken, you can get around most of the certification issues and transfer your .ipa wirelessly instead of using iTunes, but that's a discussion for another day)

4. Can I use p2p?

Yes!

5. Can I use ServerSocket?

No, but you can use Sockets.

6. What happened to “pfi” (packer for iPhone)?

It’s now built in to adt. So you now use adt to compile for everything: desktop, TV, Android, Apple devices, etc.

7. Can I use ANT to launch ADT?

Yes, make sure to build out your .swf first and then your packaging task will look something like this:

8. Is 2.6 really that much faster than 2.5?

Yes, it’s noticeably faster. You’ll still want to avoid complex filters and other intensive graphics though. Make sure to build a proof of concept before committing to anything.

9. What about the Amazon Market problems?

Read this: http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/archives/2011/03/air-2-6-applications-and-the-amazon-appstore-for-android.html

10. Anything else you want to tell me?

Yes, I recommend getting VERY familiar with “app-descriptors”. They’ll define everything from screen rotation to keyboards and from icons to app permissions. It’s all that “other” stuff you’re probably not used to worrying about.