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Guys, apparently the AIR is no longer an Adobe priority. Tell the developers when you are planning to end AIR support ?
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I am not sure. I see a small but dedicated team probably somewhere in India, and a new AIR release every 3 months, which is great, and addresses the most important parts. It is not simple to keep up with a runtime for 4 entirely different OS, and they keep adding also new features. I think we can't ask for more. They do an amazing job considering Adobe keeps it in the basement.
MyFlashLabs and Distriqt make our life easier with ANEs, and they do deserve our support.
I do wish from the bottom of my heart that AIR continues to thrive for the years by, but yes a clear statement form Adobe would be great. Still I can't agree with pessimists neither with optimists.
Let's hope.
Cheers to fellows AS lovers.
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For what it's worth, I got a respons from Adobe on their Animate Facebook page when I asked them if they still care about AIR: "As far as I know, there has been no change to our plans for Adobe AIR. ^PK"
Hopefully someone from the Adobe AIR staff can confirm their ongoing commitment.
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Yep, the classic "business as usual" answer and it's good.
For AIR, business as usual means we will keep getting those quarterly updates.
We will get an update in March, and then in June, and another one in September etc.
For all the people that freaking out about the Android 64-bit updates, here my prediction (mark my words LOL)
and yeah I'm not related or connected in anyway to Adobe (I don't know or talk to any Adobe employees),
I have exactly zero insider information, but I can tell you that:
At the very least the AIR release of June 2019 will implement the Android 64-bit update,
just shy of 2 months from the official limit of August 2019 which will give plenty of time to update,
and yeah maybe there will be bugs, which then will be fixed by the next release in September 2019,
and that's the worst case scenario.
Let's see what happen
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Yeah something like that.
Now they are committed to the ios upgrade. Then they will take care of android 64. I guess if they didn't make it so far it's probably because it's not trivial. In the end we will have better performance on android which was a bit poor against ios. Surely new bugs and probably some old that will be gone.
As I said elsewhere I think the resources on Air are limited so they don't waste them babysitting users. Personally I prefer that they work on the code than on the forum...
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Right on. Hilarious that some above think this proves they're committed to an upgrade and we'll be getting regular updates. I must be a half-empty kind of person or just not consuming happy pills. This is one of the biggest tech companies around--they have the resources to make official statements. Yet, the last one was 2 years ago and in a locked thread. I'm happy to be wrong but I'll be sure to provide the my customer's accounting department with the "as far as I know" statement... along with the reference to these plans which haven't changed. I wonder to what plans "PK" is referring. Perhaps it's the yet to be revealed roadmap Chris announced in early 2017.
I love this thread.
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But I really don't understand the reasons why they don't invest in tech, for them it's drop in an ocean.
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As a shareholder I'd ask why should they invest anything? I suspect they're only supporting it as far as they feel they're obligated--nothing more. If anyone has insight as to how you'd explain to a shareholder why they should spend $1, I'm all ears.
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They did invest a lot in the past (flash/coldfusion) but badly and their marketing has always been off. But let's not forget that they did not create Flash or Coldfusion, they inherited them when they bought macromedia, they try to cash in on those 2 and failed and then they stop all marketing efforts and all development efforts on those 2 and let them slowly die until so few people use it that they can safely call it a day. This is Adobe strategy in a nutshell for Flash tech and Coldfusion: Make it as unattractive as possible so fewer people use it, and THEN pull the plug.
Flash was a monopole, Flash was killing all competition attempts, Flash was the best and Adobe managed to kill it anyway. That's really what Adobe is amazing at, killing what's impossible to kill.
They spent the BIG bucks when they tried to make Flash tech a mobile OS of choice. It failed miserably and that was the beginning of the end for Flash as far as Adobe was concerned.
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Summing up a lot: industry interests; Adobe and its shareholders just want to be good with the rest of the industry, over any of its products.
It is something like the eternal vhs - beta debate, but in a much more absurd situation.
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IMO, Adobe took a bet on JS/HTML when they purchased Phonegap. They thought that'd be the future of a hybrid app development. Also, they couldn't work out a working and profitable licencing for AIR. I wonder why Adobe couldn't, since Unity with much less resources could figure out the model which benefited both the devs and the company.
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The decision of Adobe has more to do with synchronizing with the rest of the industry (html5) than having bought phonegap. Rather this second is the consequence of the first.
The difference between Unity and Adobe, is that the first ONLY sell that product, exclusively. Adobe has dozens of products to sell. Flash is "one more product".
From my point of view, Unity would not be in the current state of extension in the market, if Adobe had bet heavily by Flash / AIR / Stage3D over these years (we would be in a much more advanced state with 2D tools and 3D much more powerful).
They would have devastated the market because they had a technology that already worked very well and that was extremely widespread in the market. Unity would only have a "small niche". In Unity they had that great luck.
Apple also had that great luck. Because the latter, if not for the coward decision of Adobe, would have been forced to install the Flash plugin on their devices. Recall that what was established and widespread was Flash Player. The devices of Apple were a simple novelty (much slower than a computer of the time) that tried to integrate into the market.
The shareholders of Adobe, simply did not want to risk, nor wanted problems with the rest of the industry. Together they move the money they want, with the products they want.
You can call it "conspiracy," or "industry interests." But it has nothing to do with selling "what's best for people or for developers."
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You nailed it, Unity has simply done what Adobe didn't bother to do (and could have done easily) with its technological monopoly. Apple did not just kick Flash out of its devices but they also tried to kick out everything not XCode based (some here might remember this) including Unity and that did not go well at all, after only a couple weeks they had to reverse their decision following the threats of losing their entire market. Not such threat though about Flash mainly cos Adobe didn't know what to do and how to handle the situation. it was simply safer to not do anything and not care.
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ASWC wrote
Unity has simply done what Adobe didn't bother to do (and could have done easily) with its technological monopoly. ...
... Not such threat though about Flash mainly cos Adobe didn't know what to do and how to handle the situation. it was simply safer to not do anything and not care.
You don't know what you're talking about
Adobe, or anyone else for that matter, could not provide Flash for the mobile browser
because Apple changed the licensing to restrict interpreters (other than JS)
and yeah Adobe engineers did something, they took the Flash runtime
added AOT compilation to the already existing JIT compilation / interpreter mode
and they used this AOT to cross-compile AS3 / SWF / SWC / assets / timeline / etc.
to native binary (IPA) for iOS, so Apple could not even dream to kick out AIR apps from the app store
see here Flash Iphone Fitc 2010
Such cross-compilation can work with something like AIR, not within a browser plugin like Flash,
so if you want to blame someone blame Apple.
And everyone else did the same thing (using AOT): Unity, Mono, C#, Java, Lua, etc. because it is the ONLY WAY
Unity did not get a special treatment from Apple, they also had to use AOT to compile a native binary
also
ASWC wrote
...
At some point it's gonna get a make over and some options are gonna disappear like likely Flash/AIR/Projectors etc and eventually be only HTML software.
You don't know that, for one Animate CC is the only tool that can allow such variety of exports
why would they shoot themselves in the foot by removing features other tools do not have?
See it like that, Animate CC is a tool for creative people that are not necessarily hard core dev,
being able to export to something like an IPA or APK via Adobe AIR is a tremendous and very convenient feature.
In itself you could see Adobe AIR as a middleware, Animate CC reuse that middleware to exports stuff,
other people can "program it all" by taking advantage of that free middleware without having to go through Animate CC.
You should be grateful to Adobe for that.
A Unity Pro license end up costing $1500/year, Unity free license only allow you to publish non-commercial content.
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Why $1500 / year for a commercial app is bad? You get an always updated framework, tones of assets in the marketplace, support from professionals (chat), 2 trainings per month and many more.
This is less than my yearly coffee spent!
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https://forums.adobe.com/people/Leo+Kanel wrote
Why $1500 / year for a commercial app is bad? You get an always updated framework, tones of assets in the marketplace, support from professionals (chat), 2 trainings per month and many more.
This is less than my yearly coffee spent!
I'm not saying it is bad, I'm saying in comparison Adobe AIR is free and allow developers to publish commercial content
but apparently a bunch of people here think it is bad that Adobe AIR is free?
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I'm not complaining about the fact that air is free but I might prefer to pay and have a better support and bug fix.
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marcanw wrote
I'm not complaining about the fact that air is free but I might prefer to pay and have a better support and bug fix.
you can pay $1500/year Animate CC subscription
to show Adobe how much you care about the tech (especially the exports with AIR part)
you can pay $1500/year donation to the open source projects mentioned above
to show them support
You have plenty of options
also if your main worry is Adobe EOL'ing Adobe AIR, as a paying customer of Animate CC, you and others,
could clearly make your voice heard a bit stronger eg. "we don't want you to remove that export to AIR feature"
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Well if free is an excuse to don't deliver, then it shouldn't be free. Heck, it should be free to start with. This is how you make a sustainable business. Make something good, charge for it, people who can afford it, keep it good. This is what unity, game maker, game salad and many many others do.
I wonder how much money Adobe got, when Rovio used AIR for Angry birds, or when Ubisoft for their games, or Warner Brothers.
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Make AIR great again!
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"This is less than my yearly coffee spent!"
That's a lot of coffe mate! I wonder how much you spend in anti-acids!
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Lol if you think about it is $4 / day so about a coffee max, which is good. Although I have to admin, there are days i have 2 or 3 Still, though coffee never made me money. AIR, unity, native etc. did.
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Pointing out the value of AIR does not translate into a reason why Adobe will support it. The reason they'll likely drop it is because it costs them in support. We all know the benefit--I think we all have projects that value this. Just because it's valuable doesn't mean anything to the shareholders. The concept of paying for it is so that shareholders have a reason to support.
Approximately how many months or years of non-response from Adobe would convince you it's EOL'd? Personally, I just think they need to say one way or the other. It's costing people real money. Not the first time Adobe has screwed their customers. (Oh, yeah, it's free so I guess we're not customers.)
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Come on .... Flash CS 5.5. The first one to allow publishing to App store .... Adobe worked directly with Apple to pull that off and 2 weeks (was it after or before the launch of Flash CS 5,5?) Apple announced they would not allow third party tech publishing. A stab in the back of Adobe and a stab in the back of all third party techs. Adobe didn't weigh much in overturning Apple decision, the other third party techs and fans did and rightfully so. Apple backed off shortly after. Anyone remember Adobe handling of the situation? Yeah me neither.
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They were probably busy working in AIR rather than doing something
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There is a difference between AIR, which is a free to use delivery platform, and what Adobe put a lot of development time into. Converting AIR to also publish to mobile web, for example, would directly compete with the paid products that Adobe make, that already do the same thing.
Look at some of the improvements to Adobe Animate there have been in the last few months:
What's new and changed in the October 2018 release of Animate CC (version 19.0)
It also publishes to nine different platforms, as well as custom platforms. So, lots of effort from Adobe to publish to these various platforms, but you would need to be using the paid for Animate, and not the free to use AIR.