AIR33 Where is it?

[Leo Kanel]

Is it me or AIR33 Beta is delayed? We are a few days before April and there is no beta version yet. It looks like the 1st quarter release is missed.

[el111]

Thanks for the information Andrew ajwfrost75​

We'll be providing a beta release to Distriqt, MyFlashLabs and others as soon as the updated SDK license agreement has passed our legal and financial review process

Please don't just make the beta available to a select few. There are other ANE authors out here who wish to provide 64bit as soon as it's available

Eoin - Tua Rua Ltd.

[fmontfort974]

Yes. We are some indy devs who create and publish ANEs for Adobe AIR.

[Herado__]

Thanks for the news Andrew,

We're hopeful that the future of AIR33+ with Harman will be safe.

Certainly providing 64 bit android support is great news.

I'm surprised you are not taking over the compilers - it would seem to me this would be essential.

On that front please can you reassure the AIR dev community that we will be able to compile our Actionscript and Flex mobile projects in the future.

Regarding the commercial aspect. We will be happy enough to pay a reasonable fee provided the technology and support is there.

One more question - what is happening to AIR for IOS, mac and windows?  Does it remain (stuck) in AIR32 or does HARMAN take it forward. Thanks Ged

[Frédéric C.]

I think we may want to create another thread about the promising future of Adobe Air. This one is full of useless negativity and obsolete remarks.

[ajwfrost75]

Thanks for all the interest and questions! We'll be providing more details before too long and will take these on board. And yes, happily there's a lot of traffic hitting our website and email address, which is nice .. but am off out now for the evening so will have to leave things unattended for a bit!

[JasonInfuse]

I am really hopeful about this. I am certainly willing to pay to support Air development.

[marcanw]

Hope that with samsung behind we will have a better android experience on AIR.

Perf and stability wise it was a bit weak on android.

[hferreira80]

I will manage my expectations until see where this will take as.

This can turn into something bad or into something great.

Any way, now AIR have a chance of a future, so this is great news and a surprise.

Developers demanded for a way to pay to have appropriated support, bug fixs and if possible new features, performance improvements when possible and more ways to target AIR (Linux for example that we had in the past).

So. let's see how much most people really wanted to happen and also a reasonable price is key for the success.

Who said, that is normal to provide a software and not to response to his community on a official forum or provide support for Linux for dubious reasons, may see now a new reality (at least that's my felling with the announcement because it's the normal way in the software world).

[hferreira80]

Now the fanboys are silent (no surprise) when defends that Adobe at all cost.

For me AIR was in maintenance mode at least the last 2 years:

1. 0 innovation.

2. We had almost to beg like a dog to get Windows 64 bits.

3. Critical issues delayed to the very last moment (Android 64 bits was the icing on top of the cake and motivate me to go away on AIR for Mobile - I didn't start iet but I will, even with the news).

4. Ridiculous excuses from fanboys about that they are not obligated and there is no need a beta version for testing and bla, bla, bla

5. And for last but not least, 0 support on the official adobe air forum.

New name for the last official AIR 32 - Abandon Integrated Runtime

This news where the best we got on the past last years, about AIR.

No ones knows what will happen but at least there is hope.

Having hope means that AIR community suffered for too much time.

Now funboys can say that I need a doctor (I don't care )

[Leo Kanel]

Lol, don't let them get on your head. I had been in discussions both with Adobe and Harman before the announcements. The fact that they were told to be silent until everything was in place, followed by the continuation of AIR32 as is up to 2020 (there had to be a 2020 in there...) proves a lot of things.

The good thing is that at least Harman looks hyped to work on this, and maybe with the paid plan, they can now afford to add some new features and give good support. Unfortunately I believe that this came too late, as I know a loot of devs who jumped ship to other frameworks (me included), but at least we get to keep some legacy apps.

[federicor30206780]

Perhaps they can bring you back to the ship in the future Leo !

[Leo Kanel]

Never say never I say Maybe one day, AIR will be again a very competitive tech but after being spoiled with the new solutions, I find it hard, at least for the imminent future, to get my team back to it. However with the new announcement, I will keep maintenance to a lot of older apps we have, on my own

[marcanw]

While you pay for it (even for legacy apps) it will help funding AIR 🙂

[ASWC]

It's gonna be a challenge for sure. It's not really about bringing back developers to the tech but more about bringing new developers to the tech. The old non evolving AS3 is not helping in comparison to those modern and always evolving languages that are everywhere nowadays. Nothing really wrong with AS3 but nothing really exciting about it either. AS3 is gonna make the success of this more difficult and challenging. If only we had ASNext ....

[ASWC]

I have said it many times on these forums that Adobe will likely pull the plug on AIR very soon and I have been called many names for saying this. Turns out (once again) I was right all along. Adobe is pulling the plug on AIR starting this month and officially completely abandon AIR next year. They announced they will only provide BASIC update until then, whatever that means.

As for HARMAN taking over, when looking deeper into their business, products and roadmaps, it's very unlikely they will develop further the AIR platform at all or at least not in a way that most here would expect. They will adapt it to their needs and products for sure and then provide AIR developers with a commercial SDK version for the sole purpose of being able to publish to supported platforms. The goal is extremely likely to squeeze some money out of it until it's completely dead while they can keep using the technology for their internal needs.

Sorry guys, I know this sucks, but HARMAN is not going to save AIR, they are just going to maintain the SDK so you can keep publishing and make you pay for it and that's all there is to it, no new features, no new nothing.

Anyone that has still AIR apps in stores, you have less than a few months to switch to a different technology, even if you agree to pay for the right to publish with AIR it's likely it won't last that long anyway.

[hferreira80]

For one hand I have the same opinion as you have.

This is one of the reasons that I keep my plan of migrate a mobile AIR to another chosen technology (desktop is another story).

Every time I said what I think about AIR, Adobe and AIR support I was also stoned (I don't see this in ANY other kind of technology forum, at least this way. It's called religious fundamentalism or if you prefer funboys).

BUT for another hand, we should give same credit to Harman, otherwise you are doing that same that users gave to you all this time.

Let's see what will happen.

As I'm using AIR only for Desktop and they already said that their focus for now is Android (even iOS is out for now), I will not be one of their customer in a short term.

[Frédéric C.]

LOL. Wow, it didn't get long before new prophecies of doom emerge... Welcome to Hell, Andrew!

Reminds me of this funny video: Debbie Downer: Disney World - SNL - YouTube

Better laugh about it...

[ajwfrost75]

Just to clarify the 'HARMAN' thing: it's a big company, but please don't read too much into what our plans are for AIR by looking at what HARMAN does or the fact it's owned by Samsung. We're taking this on in our business unit which is separate from all the automotive and audio products that make up the bulk of HARMAN's business. So it's not something we're doing for our own internal purposes, it's because we see value in the runtime and have a lot of expertise invested in this over the years. Yes it will need to be something that we offer commercially because we need to invest in the development of it, but I would love the future features/roadmap to be directed by the people who use it most i.e. you!

thanks

[chaky]

I really hope that is the case Andrew. I have invested 3 years in the making of the game that I am about to publish. I can not afford to switch to another technology and I love AS3 and Starling and Feathers UI.

Please don't leave us.

Regards,

Caslav

[ASWC]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure or convinced you guys taking on AIR will end up nowhere but it's clearly possible, maybe the only likely possibility. What AIR needs is a huge mountain of improvements, not just maintenance, to make AIR relevant again and a real player in cross platform tech. As far as I can tell you guys are gonna get a small team on this which seems to indicate maintenance mode only. Most tech articles I saw online (the few that commented on this) about this noticed Adobe is pulling the plug dead cold on AIR and HARMAN won't put a big team on it and is only gonna try to cash out on the dead tech for a few years and I got to say that sounds like the likely outcome to me as well. Maybe I'm wrong of course and those articles are wrong as well, we'll know soon enough.

Anyway this announcement is making us move faster on our replacement of AIR, we still have 8 apps made with AIR with conversion in progress and we are accelerating the development so we can replace all our AIR apps by the end of summer.

[ASWC]

For anyone interested this is my conversation with my project manager:

- A company is taking over AIR and will make us pay for using it? OK, did they announce a commitment to any feature development?

- no

- Did they announce a clear goal for that technology?

- no

- Did they publish a roadmap or said they will publish one soon?

- Not that I know, I don't think so.

- yeah, AIR is over for good, we need to replace all our AIR apps and we need to do it now, this is top priority.

[Leo Kanel]

Well we should be glad we at least will get android 64bit. Harman and Andrew look like putting a lot of effort on this. This will give a lot of people some more time ( to either migrate or run their apps).

This could have gone a lot worst.

[kheftel]

Most tech articles I saw online (the few that commented on this) about this noticed Adobe is pulling the plug dead cold on AIR and HARMAN won't put a big team on it and is only gonna try to cash out on the dead tech for a few years

I see the rumor mill is alive and well still, churning out articles despite no actual inner knowledge of negotiations etc...

yes, of course it could go either way, but only time will tell.

[TeotiGraphix]

For what it's worth, those of us making money off current apps could care less about more features atm.

To me, I can pay for 64bit support to have my apps run a bit longer to see what is the next step(plus the 2 I almost have done).

I think anybody that values their business already has counter measures in place considering it's June.

I wrote my all my apps with no external dependencies for a reason and the 64bit thing is just a pothole, but I already knew the road we were on in the Fall so did most others.

[PippoApps]

What I see here is that AIR has a big opportunity for a new life. Andrew is a direct connection with the team inside HARMAN, and he has given us all the reassurances we could hope for. He has a positive attitude towards all our needs and views related to AIR. We can finally pay for what we use (I don't know about you, but if I wanted to be on the free side of things I would work with the latest free JavaScript library hoping the teenagers behind it on github will continue supporting it).

I am for professional, paid products and I wish for AIR to become a commercial success for HARMAN.

This could be a real new life for the framework we love.

We can advocate for pessimism or optimism, but that doesn't mean a thing. It's just speculation, and we have enough of that on Facebook on any possible topic in life.

So, let's clear this space from what our "guts" suggest us, and keep this discussion going to give Andrew insights from the developers point of view, without wasting his time with our emotions.