AIR is now from HARMAN, what to expect?

Its hard to avoid thinking about Harman is pulling some strings(Its Samsung behind them), to acquire AIR just when Google announced that every AIR app must support x64 had a clear and opportunistic intention, with a shorten deadline than the rest of the frameworks, looked so obvious that even Google had to reverse or smooth a little bit its decision extending that deadline. Harman thought every AIR developer will buy instantly its new acquisition, but instead they received a massive desertion, with almost every AIR developer announcing the imminent porting of their games, and even their apps, with the new deadline the time was in favor to all of them to complete this porting... until today... that Google announced to all of AIR developers that have until November 1st, less than a month, to update ALL apps to target Android 9 (API Level 28), not even the Google apps support this last API Level. This shorten AGAIN the deadline for developers to port their games to a less than a month. But AGAIN Harman is doing the things the bad way, again they are repressing their supporters, this is a kind of technological masochism, nobody is going to run and buy its expensive and incomplete technology, instead, this is going to enforce even more AIR developers to move away from AIR for good and forever, I prefer to unpublish all my games than support this dirty game against all of the people that supported Adobe for decades. I don't know a single successful company built in less than a year, every one started first building confidence and gaining followers, Harman started beating hard the supporters of the technology they just acquired, well, how do they think this is going to end in a successful way for them?, this is going to end the obvious way: AIR DEATH.

There are thousands, or even millions of games that were created with Flash. A lot of these games are disappearing from the internet even though they are still fun and would attract a lot of players.

Most of these games only need a minor upgrade to be turned into Android, iOS and Desktop AIR applications.

Those Flash programmers just need tutorials to upgrade their apps to AIR, to add advertising ANEs, and to streamline the process for uploading their games to the different stores.

Unity makes a lot of its money from its Asset Store. Harman could do the same by providing a centralized location for selling design elements, ANEs and code. There could even be a game store for all the great Flash games that were upgraded to work with AIR.

Harman can do something great with AIR, but this will require a clear roadmap to prove that AIR is going to improve and maintain its position as a serious SDK.

"I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it." The silence over the techonology (the SDK) is so freaking loud!!

ajwfrost75​

Might be good, because it provides amazing support especially business enterprise customers, Also it embeds flash layer with clients SWF (Small web format) applications.

Google extends the deadline for Adobe AIR 12 months....

Android Developers Blog: Get your apps ready for the 64-bit requirement

So this way we have one more year to port, to wait Harman or to remove the apps, we can still update our games/apps with AIR 32 until August 2020.

It's ironic that for the guys that already have a 64 bit solution have more time to solve this imposition, imagine that Windows force every developer to update their apps when started to support x64, even today are released new 32bit apps without any problems.

Any good 64 bit OS is capable to execute 32bit apps without any problem, I don't know why Goolgle is imposing this architecture for ALL apps, if this is not going to bring any significant improvement to the Android Users, on the counter, it will consume their storage capacity faster, because 64 bit apps are HUGE.

So first of all, I was talking about longer term thriving of the whole ecosystem, and how to start getting attention of new users (namely "designer/coders").  I do understand that in the next say 12 months, the priority should be to stabilize AIR runtime and prove there are still some users left to pay for it. Also maybe thats everything that Harman wants forever and is ok with that. But:

"That is not realistic is that you can think at this point to convert AIR into a complete solution with an editor that exports directly to Starling, gpu, 2d, 3d, etc. Forget this. In fact there is no company that has that so "complete solution", except Unity (mainly for 3D). "

Why not? I wouldn't expect an excellent system, like Unity editor where you could add custom user extensions for the IDE. Its about having one simple visual workflow, rather than having nothing. Or having Animate CC, which is more like adding to the confusion about what AIR really is. The key is focus. 3d is definitely not needed, that is Unity territory. Also you write as if Starling, gpu, 2d are three separate things to make it seem more complex, lol. It's just 1 single thing - a simple visual editor with layers, keyframe animations and some boilerplate code to publish the thing you create straight to apk. You don't need to build AS3 editor IDE from scratch as well, just use whatever is available (IntelliJ, Flash Builder etc.), like Unity uses MonoDevelop or MSVC.

There is a big legacy of Flash users who were firstly designers, that's another reason why I think it would be a smart thing to do for attracking new (or new/old) users.  I had a designer client like that, he used Flash / AIR for a while to build simple mobile games for his clients.Then  wondered why those simple games with couple sprites were so sluggish(he used filters for example..why not, when the Animate IDE offers that?). Its just confusing! I tried to explain about Stage3D and the GPU acceleration and how filters are really no good anymore..but that made him even more confused. He didn't care about knowing about Stage3D or programming from scratch, he just wanted to build simple stuff with couple sprites added visually + some code, done. Eventually, he migrated to Unity, which is IMO more complex/awkward for 2D  but it seemed like more "complete" workflow to him. And there was the asset store, so yeah.

Sure, Harman should firstly focus on keeping the current hardcore AIR devs, because those are probably the only ones left at this point. But after that, I think if they want to start appealing to their former userbase or people similar to that and grow...the visual path is the one I would take. Its really not as complex as many of you seem to think. I developed a simple visual system in HTML5 / JS / jQuery for Photoshop, as a hobby project on the side. It took couple months. You could publish apps straight from Photoshop to your phone, with visual code(translated to JS/jQuery), with keyframe animations, sounds etc. I created hidden object game room, calculator, piano app...very quickly. It wasn't perfect, but I was alone and had to use the weird poorly documented Adobe extension language.

The hardest part BY FAR is developing the tech underneath - the actual AIR SDK. Its like the engine of the car (and also the wheels etc.). The thing we're missing is like the metal on top...try to sell a car without that to the masses.But that is what pays for the development of all the hard /costly stuff.

Regarding other technologies, we will see how long they last in the market. What I see, most are half-baked solutions that last only a few years at the top. None is perfect.

Give me a language like as3.0 (with its limits, like all) as well as the consistency and completeness of the ecosystem, and I leave it for you (those who want it), more "modern" solutions, which "neither" have any guarantee of continuing at the top market five more years (which is the concern of many) ...

Whoever expects a medium-term plan to turn AIR into the next Unity, forget it.

The objective of Harman is to continue developing the SDK, not to make it the next technology to destroy the rest of the technologies on the market.

Google, Adobe (for the type of products they want), Apple, Microsoft ... are companies with resources capable of creating complete "Unity's". The Harman division that is developing AIR is a "small" company (its not "Samsung"). The same can not be demanded from them.

Creating a "Unity" from scratch, it's an immense job. Years and years to get where they are (editor and language status, marketplace, extensions, etc). In addition to this, I believe that the Unity company has had great luck at the moment with the decision of Adobe to leave Flash aside from 2011 ... It's not just that they have invested in that technology. Everything has been perfect in time for them.

If Adobe had supported Flash the right way (2d and 3d at that time with a lot of potential) right now Unity probably tended to have a niche market, because Flash would also approach 3D to a very advanced state (editors, frameworks, etc).

So it's not just a matter of investing a lot of money in a technology. You have to have some luck in the market.

What Harman is doing is the right thing to do. They are adequate plans for a medium term (1 - 2 years).

I always say that you have to be realistic, and if someone do not like where AIR is heading, change technology (and do not waste more time in AIR forums, because it does not make sense ...)

Andrew from Harman has posted several times that they are going to take Air as a serious business and that they intend to pick it up from where it was left by Adobe.

That is not necessarily a good thing. It's empty pr talk.

"Serious business" also means that they will ditch it if it doesn't generate revenue after 1-2 quarters and that they won't EVER open source the sdk.

As they also don't have full access to the source code, and even less so for Adobe Animate, you will never see a fully fledged IDE to support the sdk - which will drive away every possibly new developer these days.

And there are not that many serious developers left. I could e.g. look at subscription numbers at Distriqt to take the wild guess that there won't be more than a moderate 4 figure customer count without new users.

We will move away from Air for our future projects, the risk involved is just not acceptable for a "serious business". We can't risk leaving our apps (which generate 6 figure sums) stranded. We can also no accept royalties just for the sdk usage.

Even the 20-30$/Month comparing a sdk with Unity without any provided eco system (it's all done by the community...) is kind of ridiculous.

P.S.: Let's be realistic: Harman doesn't even manage to put a simple website online in over two months. To me that is some trust lost right there and looks like a company with top-down management and massive bureaucracy. You think these managers care if they pull the plug in half a year?

What I think will happen with Harman and AIR SKD, is a middle ground between "nothing but maintenance for a while" and "everything spectacular in less than a year" (some more extremist people has expressed it in a similar way, with only two opposing possibilities).

The second is impossible even for a company like google with legions of programmers. No other framework of any other company is advancing by leaps and bounds. Much less has absolutely all the features that a team of programmers needs.

AIR compared to other frameworks, it is "mostly" missing out on "polishing things", but I do not think it is necessary to add big features short term (except export to more formats, but not everyone has that need). By this I mean that the steps that AIR advances are not equivalent to those of other technologies that have been on the market just recently (which may have "modern things" but may lack other features that AIR has a long time ago).

It is true that for Harman (and for some developers) there is a problem: they are only going to develop the SDK, but they can not sell  complete solutions together with visual environments like AnimateCC. So there will be people who will have to pay for both. But ... It is also true that if your company already uses part of the Adobe CC package (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc), you can think from the perspective that they will not pay more for Animate CC ...

In Adobe times expenses were covered within an integrated solution (Flash / Actionscript from within the same visual editor). But this is not going to be like this from now on ... I see that it is impossible for Harman to develop something "visual" in the medium term. Maybe I see them in the future reaching some kind of agreement with other companies for this. As long as things go well ...

Harman, I'm pretty sure, do not have big resources for AIR. But I'm also sure that they will be enough to maintain and add features for years. You have to be realistic. Adobe could afford to "give away" AIR because it covered (to some extent) the expenses with its design applications. But that's not the case with Harman.They need money because developing AIR takes many resources !. They have to charge for it. There is no other solution. If they charge too little, it's not worth it.

What is not realistic is that you can think at this point to convert AIR into a complete solution with an editor that exports directly to Starling, gpu, 2d, 3d, etc. Forget this. In fact there is no company that has that so "complete solution", except Unity (mainly for 3D). But Unity has been in the market for a lot of years. If they had to start now to assemble part of what they have, it would take them at least five years...