AIR is now from HARMAN, what to expect?

Report · May 30, 2019

It is good or bad?

Report · May 30, 2019

Might be the last nail in the coffin. Or not?

This news is hitting the net now.

Report · May 30, 2019

I think this is a good thing.

Now instead of 2 employees from adobe spending their spare time at lunch working on it... Maybe HARMAN will have an actual team working on it.

Can only go up from here.

Its a a very strange move tho. I‘m really disappointed in Adobe here. They say they are committed to the developer but they are not.

Report · May 30, 2019

I'm excited for this change.
I think Adobe never figured out a way to make money from AIR, so development stagnated on it.
Maybe Harman will figure out a fair pricing model and develop new features and support even more platforms.

Or maybe they'll take the tech in a direction that we don't want. Who knows?
I guess I'll just wait and see what happens.

Report · May 30, 2019

I was anticipating an end of life announcement. So this is a great thing.

The world really does does need to realize how good this platform is.

Perfect example. I have 3 co-op students working on an iOS prototype right now. I was able to build in 3 days what will take them 2 weeks.... and mine works on Android as an added bonus.

Report · Jun 04, 2019

Exactly. Super quick deployment. And as phone specs get faster, performance issues become less important. Adobe is bailing on this at exactly the wrong time.

Report · Jun 04, 2019

My guess. It's likely that Samsung has a substantial AIR based investment in their smart TV segement and automotive interfaces they're preserving. It would be great to see smart TV apps again. We had our AIR application running on a Samsung TV once as an R&D test back in the day.

Report · Jun 04, 2019

In the past, Samsung Bluray player and TVs had AIR support, right?

Report · Jun 05, 2019

Yes, in like 2008-9 there were a couple of tutorials on how to deploy for Samsung TVs. However they changed to tizen a few years later.

Harman has many clients with AIR apps and I think they still have a few car multimedia centers running on AIR UI. The good thing is that with their update for Android 64, we will see some performance gain, as our apps right now are very limited.

Report · Jun 06, 2019

Note that Andrew wrote that Samsung is probably not even aware of the licensing of Air by Harman. So at this point it is probably nothing they consider vital at Samsung. (Although I wish they would notice this and see the potential and invest heavily )

My expectations so far, also based on what Harman has published:

- Continued, long term support for Air on the currently supported platforms.

- Eventually (2020?) a stand-alone website for Air with aggregated marketing materials, documentation and forums.

- Hopefully a good business case for Harman that allows them to acquire all rights on Air and all additional tools in the future that are currently not part of the deal.

Report · May 30, 2019

I think it's good thing.

Report · May 31, 2019

This can definitely be a good thing. I believe AIR still has a very good spot in the market for being the best alternative for doing light, effective and great apps/games for web, mobile and desktop. We have already moved on to Unity for most of our games (due to Adobe's lack of a clear roadmap) but we miss the speed of development getting a new AIR project up and running on all devices.

Now, we really need support for HTML5 output. Flash is out so this is a must for making any serious cross platform online apps/games.

And please, remove the air.* name requirement for Android. It's just stupid.

Report · May 31, 2019

Hi Karl,

Let see what happen after this amazing news.

And for your last question, here's a link that explain the process for removing air. prefix on Android.

Removing air prefix from package name.

Hope it helps.

Report · Jun 04, 2019

According to their site, they too have a bunch of legacy applications and customers, included embedded systems like automotive. I'm guessing some are Andriod based, hence their announcement to get the 64bit Andriod thing fixed before the deadline. Guess they figured it was cheaper to buy AIR then let it die.

Harman - Adobe Partnership - HARMAN

scroll to the bottom

It can't be worst than the current, where we get a release that breaks all desktop video and no one responds for two weeks.

Report · Jun 04, 2019

Bad. Adobe was tired of keeping us locked up under the stairs, so their shipping us off to live at the orphanage. Maybe not worse, just a different flavor of miserable.

It also seems like there would have been so many better custodians of Air: Daniel from Gamua, Jack at Greensock, the guys from Distriqt, even older players like the guys at Multidmedia. I'm not saying those guys were interested. But I would have given to a crowdfunding campaign if one of them had been willing to take the helm. Finally, somebody who knew and loved the product would have been working on it. Air could have been exciting again.

But Adobe has been killing Flash since the day they got it. Now they can be done.

Report · Jun 06, 2019

It's the end, it's management of dead tech with the expectation of making some money out of it. The advantage for Adobe is that now the plug can be pulled on AIR at anytime since Adobe is not responsible for it anymore. For HARMAN, as long as AIR can make them some money they will run the updates but as soon as the income goes below a certain level then AIR will be out. This can come as soon as next month, you will never get a warning. AIR new feature from HRAMAN? You can always dream .... But dreams don't make apps.

Report · Jun 06, 2019

What I HOPE and so far it seems a well placed hope, is that AIR will be maintained and have behind someone who actually cares and makes it profitable.

What I EXPECT, is a lot of pessimism and negativity from the usuals

Report · Jun 06, 2019

"pessimism and negativity from the usuals" well of course, it's not like we have been right all along .... lol maybe THIS time we'll get it wrong right?

Report · Jun 06, 2019

We understand.. AIR is dead, you told us, and you jumped some time ago to another technologies.

Why you keep posting trying to evangelize others with your truth?. We are grown people, we saw the same thing that you and we can make our own decisions.

Learn other language, other technologie, is always a right way. I did it, and I also have hopes that Harman put AIR where it deserves. I think they will.

But thanks for the advice anyway.. We understand it.

Report · Jun 07, 2019

You have evangelists or if you prefer fundamentalist fanatics or even the buzz word, funboys in everywhere.

The devil's lawyer guy (for example @ASWC): On one side, you have who defends that AIR is dead, it's evil and you should not even think of using it. The technology, should be banned for good and after that we shoudl still talk about it (bad things).

On the other side (for example @zwetan_uk from here and @zwetan from his blog) you have who defends that AIR it's the best thing that happens in the world and beyond the times and Adobe should be in an altar. This kind of guys, defends there beliefs at all costs and if you try to said something against their god you are the devil and you bet that they will judge you (you evil bastard :D)

Report · Jun 07, 2019

There's also another option: seppuku

The curious part is that this happens on an AIR developers forum.

It's like hanging around a sport forum continuosly telling that sport is bad and you shouldn't do it. I can't help but question myself

The important par tin my opinion is never to lose detachment and humor.

Report · Jun 07, 2019

PippoApps escribió
It's like hanging around a sport forum continuosly telling that sport is bad and you shouldn't do it. I can't help but question myself

After all that's been written on the subject on these forums, and after repeating again and again the same stuff, either you still haven't bothered to read our posts a little, or you're still using the same fallacious argument.

No one has ever said AIR is "bad", as you say. People using these forums have always had nothing but good things to say about AIR, the technology itself. The only thing people complains about is about Adobe's mismanagement of said technology, coupled with the great lack of communication that's been plaguing it throughout this first half of the year 2019.

Anyway, the news about Harman taking over AIR seem good compared to the absolute silence and lack of movement from Adobe from the past months. But still, until things settle, the future is uncertain. This Andrew guy seems very helpful and it's reassuring to finally read posts from someone involved with the development of AIR, but we don't know for how long they'll keep on supporting AIR. Since a lot of developers have already jumped ship due to Adobe's lack of clear support for the technology, it's not certain that they will manage to make enough revenue to keep on supporting it for long. I hope they do, but we'll have to wait and see...

Report · Jun 07, 2019

Well said, of course I never said AIR was bad and I don't think anyone has here, I love that tech. For me it has been clear for a few years Adobe was managing instead of improving the tech and thus I was warning people (for me this is HELPING people) that the fate of AIR seemed to follow closely the fate of Flash. Adobe passing the baby over to HARMAN without warnings was a surprise (not a good one, I always thought Adobe would warn us a bit) so Adobe is done with AIR, that part is over. As for HARMAN you are right, nothing is certain, but "nothing is certain" is not very encouraging in AIR current situation. Again I hope I'm wrong, I'm kind of tired of being right about what Adobe is doing or not doing.

There has never been anything wrong with Flash and AIR, how is it that we are ending up without both? I don't want to blame it all on Adobe but, yeah.

Report · Jun 07, 2019

Speculating and then being "right" is just luck. Big deal.

Report · Jun 07, 2019

I agree with that statement hferreira80 . Whatever perspective you choose, extreme thinking is always a bad thing. Just saying things for the sake of being right will lead us nowhere.