Air is Dead

[72Pantera]

Let's face it guys. Air is Dead.  Look at the feature list for 4.0.  The pace of development and bug fixes have slowed to a crawl.

It's presented to us as a mobile development platform but you can't pick a video from the Gallery, read the Contacts database or Play a movie.  The forums are full of bugs and when Adobe rarely chimes in it's to ask us to vote.  Shouldn't you just fix bugs?

It's touted as a cross platform mobile environment but it's not listed in a single article comparing them.  No new developer in his right mind would program in Flash at this point. I did for ten years but I'm done. Tired of spending hours on bugs and workarounds.

I wish Adobe would spin out the two or three guys still working on it and open source it.  Maybe they could call themselves MacroMedia.

[User_Unknow]

Chris, thanks for the update!

Also want to suggest you how the Team can save some resources. Adobe AIR SDK must have external configs for anything (languages, icon validator and etc).

Each year ppl screaming here because when the Team fixing some issue - people asking to add new icon size, splash support, languages and etc. The Team spend extra time for this and holding improvements. So if they could make external validation (or without it (better) of icons, configs and etc options so anyone can use that they wants - this will works better.

The Team can doing own job and consumers will not distract the Team with this. You know how many ppl crying when they can't upload iOS app because Air don't support some language so they aksing me doing this patch Or new icon set..

Think about it )

[pierBover]

Chris Campbell wrote:

iOS workers is still on the roadmap.  I don't have a release date, but I know it'll be an extended beta type of feature.  Most of the concurrency work was gated on the new AOT compiler work, which is still being actively worked on.  Lots of bug and performance fixes were added to AIR 15 and we're not stopping there.

Thanks for your answer Chris. Sadly it does not confirm nor deny any of my points. I'm sure Air will be getting concurrency for iOS at some point, and that Air is being worked on. What everyone here doubts it's the pace at which that is occurring, and if Air development is slow it obviously means Adobe is not investing enough resources in the platform.

Concurrency should have been implemented a long time ago. Much smaller competitors have had this feature for a long time. If Adobe, a giant software company, was really committed to the platform we would have had concurrency in iOS in 2012, not in 2015. Another example: How long did it take to get to the StageVideo in Air desktop? 3-4 years after being released on Flash player?

Just look at any of the competitors in the multi-platform mobile arena.

Xamarin, a 170 employee company offers a complete native API experience in both Android, iOS, and OSX. Almost full native performance, and of course all the goodies of C# like concurrency. Performance is way better than Air, and the integration in the mobile ecosystems is lightyears ahead.

Unity, a 300 employees company, also uses Mono, and their performance and workflow for games is also lightyears away from Air.

Corona SDK, a 30 employees company, has made more in 4 years than anything the Air team has done. They don't offer concurrency because AFAIK lua does not support it, but their iOS integration is much better. You can create native maps, native videp players, native forms, etc. You can even use a WebView inside Box 2D (which is integrated in their engine).

I could go on and on (Minko, Steroids, Unreal Engine, Shiva, etc). All those companies offer significant new features, better performance, and better integration on every update.

So when you say Air is being actively developed, and that you are not stopping there, you have to understand it's difficult to take you seriously. Specially when Adobe is either upgrading the star apps (Photoshop, etc) with new features every year and investing heavily in their cloud ecosystem and their consumer touch apps.

[Oldes]

Stop crying there, pierBover.

If you are not satisfied with AIR's progress, you are free man and you can choose whatever you want to do your work. It looks you already spend quite a lot of time to inspect possibilities. If AIR is dead, as is mentioned in the title, why you come to visit such a dead forums, like this one?

Thank you for the answer Chris, so at least we know that you are alive. I hope you are doing well!

[pierBover]

Oldes_Amanita wrote:

Stop crying there, pierBove.

If you are not satisfied with AIR's progress, you are free man and you can choose whatever you want to do your work. It looks you already spend quite a lot of time to inspect possibilities. If AIR is dead, as is mentioned in the title, why you come to visit such a dead forums, like this one?

I'm presenting a case with arguments, sorry if that bothers you. You are free to present any argument yourself instead of complaining.

As a paying customer I have the right to demand a better product, or an explanation as to why Adobe has decided to shift their focus and resources away from this product. I have invested a few years of mobile and desktop development in Air and having to throw it all to the garbage doesn't make me very happy. I see now I should have invested resources in my company to go native, but I had faith that Adobe would keep improving the platform. Clearly I was wrong.

If Adobe is not killing Flash, then Adobe should start by updating their roadmap with significant new features and major improvements to the platform, because as of today that roadmap is a joke.

[User_Unknow]

then Adobe should start by updating their roadmap

You may receive updated roadmap on 16th Oct 2014

As a paying customer

You pay for Adobe AIR? Wow! I don't know about that. I assume it's free to use to anyone. May be you pay not to Adobe?

Clearly I was wrong.

When you doing something wrong - another one doing something right. You don't like AIR? Why you still here?

[pierBover]

Anton Azarov wrote:

then Adobe should start by updating their roadmap

You may receive updated roadmap on 16th Oct 2014

As a paying customer

You pay for Adobe AIR? Wow! I don't know about that. I assume it's free to use to anyone. May be you pay not to Adobe?

Clearly I was wrong.

When you doing something wrong - another one doing something right. You don't like AIR? Why you still here?

Another very helpful post from Anton.

[Oldes]

pierBover napsal(a):

As a paying customer I have the right to demand a better product, or an explanation as to why Adobe has decided to shift their focus and resources away from this product.

If i'm not wrong, AIR is free of charge in opposite to above mentioned products, so how you can be a paying customer? Of course, you can say, that you are CC user, but then you can user your CC membership for using Photoshop or other tools, you could use when you would like to create assets for other than AIR runtimes.

Also what do you expect? Do you think that Chris will now write some essay, explaining, that they had a meeting with shareholders and decided, that HTML5 is better wave to surf at this moment? I don't think so. Instead of crying there, you can work or learn something new. And there is always something new and cool so take it as it is.

And stop repeating, that Adobe is closing work on AIR, that's simply not true. To rewrite AOT compiler from Java to C++ was definitely not easy task and they would not do it, if they would be closing. I believe, that the new compiler, once stable on iOS, could be used with other systems in the future.

And one more notice... we are all dying.. and as there will not be AIR one day, we will not be there as well. Is it a reason, why we should cry now? I don't think so... I just enjoy the NOW. And now AIR gives me, what I need. If I would be in need to do a 3D shooter game, I would choose Unity3D, maybe, but would not blaming Adobe, that they don't give me 3D editor.

[pierBover]

Oldes_Amanita wrote:

If i'm not wrong, AIR is free of charge in opposite to above mentioned products, so how you can be a paying customer? Of course, you can say, that you are CC user, but then you can user your CC membership for using Photoshop or other tools, you could use when you would like to create assets for other than AIR runtimes.

Sure I pay for other tools as well. So? I also pay for Flash Builder and Flash IDE. Where do you think Adobe gets financing for working on Air? From donations like the open source community?

Also what do you expect? Do you think that Chris will now write some essay, explaining, that they had a meeting with shareholders and decided, that HTML5 is better wave to surf at this moment? I don't think so. Instead of crying there, you can work or learn something new. And there is always something new and cool so take it as it is.

I expect that Chris, or anyone else in Adobe, would stop repeating their PR scripts and start being honest. If Air is not dead, as they keep saying over and over, why aren't we getting new features, more performance improvements, etc? It's a simple question that nobody from Adobe has answered yet. The competition, which is composed of much smaller companies, are advancing much more faster than Adobe. How can that be?

And stop repeating, that Adobe is closing work on AIR, that's simply not true. To rewrite AOT compiler from Java to C++ was definitely not easy task and they would not do it, if they would be closing. I believe, that the new compiler, once stable on iOS, could be used with other systems in the future.

This and Scout are the only significant feature we've had in like 3 freaking years. What about iOS concurrency? 2014 is almost over and we don't even have a beta yet. At the current pace it won't be production ready probably until the end of 2015.

And one more notice... we are all dying.. and as there will not be AIR one day, we will not be there as well. Is it a reason, why we should cry now? I don't think so... I just enjoy the NOW. And now AIR gives me, what I need. If I would be in need to do a 3D shooter game, I would choose Unity3D, maybe, but would not blaming Adobe, that they don't give me 3D editor.

Thank you for your philosophy class. I'm already using Unity, Cinder, and Polycode for my 3D needs, obviously Adobe lost that race many years ago. I really don't understand how people are still investing time in Away3D or the like. I only use Air for creating enterprise apps and interactive contents for museums. In that aspect it's barely keeping up for small projects.

[chris.campbell]

why aren't we getting new features, more performance improvements, etc?

We're adding new features and performance improvements, multiple times a year.  Details can be found in our release notes.

[pierBover]

Chris Campbell wrote:

We're adding new features and performance improvements, multiple times a year.  Details can be found in our release notes.

Fact: there hasn't been a significant performance upgrade on mobile since Air 2.7 which was announced in June 2011, more than 3 years ago. Can you comment on that?

Can you say that apps built with Air 15 run 400% faster on mobile than apps built with Air 3 or Air 4? That would be significant, but it hasn't happened. Can you comment on why this hasn't happened, and when are we going to see such a performance increase in the near future?

[Oldes]

pierBover  napsal(a):

Can you say that apps built with Air 15 run 400% faster on mobile than apps built with Air 3 or Air 4?

Although I think I'm loosing time here, while drinking morning cafe, I can say, that you must be from different world if you expect 400% performance boost. From my experience, AIR is doing quite well, there are some places here and there, which I would like to see improved, but these are not "show stoppers" for me and I'm patient enough. I can say, that performance is better now, some crucial bugs were fixed and if I'm limited sometimes, it's mostly by HW, where AIR cannot do much better. Of course, I had to start using Stage3D, which was not there in early AIR. I'm using old classic Flash's DisplayObject just for rendering into textures, not for direct playback, but I've seen apps made in old mode, which are working on mobiles, although not at 60fps, which is logical.

And because you are quite active in this "dead" topic, Piere, I wonder (could you please list it here) what you are missing with other tools and runtimes, mentioned before, that you are in such a bad mood because of "slow" AIR progress. Are you complaining in their forums as well?

[pierBover]

Oldes_Amanita wrote:

I can say, that you must be from different world if you expect 400% performance boost.

Am I? Well here is a blog post from Adobe when they improved performance by 400% with Air 2.7. That was back in 2011, when Adobe still made videos about Air and worked on performance improvements.

From my experience, AIR is doing quite well, there are some places here and there, which I would like to see improved, but these are not "show stoppers" for me nd I'm patient enough. I can say, that performance is better now, some crucial bugs were fixed and if I'm limited sometimes, it's mostly by HW, where AIR cannot do much better.

It works well for for simple projects. I tried to tackle something a litle more complex and when I started loading retina images, or a few PNG images to compose a bigger image, my UI became very unresponsive, even when using async decode policy which in theory does the work on a second thread. I replicated the same thing in Objective C on the same device with the same images and it worked perfectly. All images loaded instantly and moved fluidly. So it's not a HW problem, it's an implementation problem. I understand Air will never get native speed, but it's not even close, and what's worse is that it hasn't even improved in 3 years.

If Adobe had given us iOS concurrency as they promised us 7 months ago when the Phonegap scandal happened I could have tried to work something out, but just yesterday Chris confirmed it will still take a long time before that feature is production ready concurrency.

And because you are quite active in this "dead" topic, Piere, I wonder (could you please list it here) what you are missing with other tools and runtimes, mentioned before, that you are in such a bad mood because of "slow" AIR progress. Are you complaining in their forums as well?

I just feel betrayed by Adobe. I should have abandoned ship when they killed Next, instead I chose to believe in Adobe and it was a bad decision. I have been a passionate Flash developer for 15 years and it's time to say good bye. It hasn't been an easy choice but Adobe keeps disappoint us on every move. If you read other posts in this thread you will see I'm not alone, and the problem goes beyond me being harsh. There are good logical reasons for this.

In any case, if you are happy with Air, good for you.

[pierBover]

Hello everyone

After writing on this thread, I have finally decided to end any Air development.

I wrote an article on Medium explaining why if anyone wants to know. Why I’m finally breaking up with Flash for good

Take care

[furian]

pierBover - I fully understand you. If you've read - we're dealing with this topic for a long time. Still, neither Chris not anyone from Adobe tells something important. They say they are improving things and they work on the project. Check their road map..

The battle is lost. That's why I stopped posting here. But I'm happy that more people like you feel betrayed by Adobe

I'll again post something from the previous AIR release, which I would TRULLY LOVE to get responded from Chris or anyone else (but I know I won't):

From Flash Player 14 / AIR 14 Release Notes:   [Chrome] Angry Birds on Facebook now works as expected (3761933)

It seems like this is the "important" stuff they're doing. pierBover - you won't get answered. I realized that months ago. No one will answer when you will get concurrency or why we still can't swap StageVideo and Stage3D. You are neither going to get an answer when Bitmap upload to GPU will be fixed, as it now takes decades to do so. They know what's important, but they also know what their team left members can handle. You won't get the answer you want, neither am I This is a huge company, they will never state they did wrong and failed.

They will keep posting micro updates on stuff that's half-baked (like only Android concurrency) and people like the ones above will keep clapping hands, because they see AIR good enough for their high-school projects, or single Main.as file ones Sorry to say it, but I don't believe ANYONE that used Stage3D with Feathers for UI rich app with dynamic loading content (+images) would say it's good enough. Especially when EVERY single "feature" needs native extensions.

So just let it be. They failed, you need new technology. Maybe you're like me - spend most of your time on Flash, knowing nothing good enough to just make the switch in one day. Hopefully you're not. Good luck with the new things you're up to, and cheers for the great support that Adobe got from your side. They'll regret they lost people like you, and me.

[seyfx001]

i hope the new roadmap (october 16) will be answer your questions!

this is only a hope...

[chris.campbell]

I want to set proper expectations for the next flash online conference.   Our intent for this conference is to highlight what our mobile team and third party frameworks/tools are working on (or have added recently).  I'll give a brief update but the bulk of the presentation will be done by others.

For Furian, Pier, and others;  As always we encourage you to use the technology that works best for you and your projects.  If that ends up being HTML5, Unity, native code or something other than the Flash Runtime, we understand and wish you success in your endeavors.  We hope that the other tools in Adobe Creative Cloud remain constants in your toolboxes and that you consider the runtime for future projects as you see fit.

We believe that the Runtime remains a great choice for developers who want a multi platform solution.  From games, education, enterprise and a myriad of other categories, developers have had great success using Flash Player and AIR.   Flash Player remains ubiquitous, installed on easily over a billion computers.  It comes bundled with all new Windows 8.x systems and every Chrome/Chrome OS installation.  It's found on nearly every computer with a connection to the internet.  AIR is also a huge success, with over 2.1 billion user installations and over a hundred thousand distinct applications created.

Our team is committed to this platform and we'll continue to focus on providing a secure and high quality product with new features that our customers have asked for.  In 2014 we've fixed hundreds of bugs, addressed critical security issues and added the following new features:

• Improved Packaging Engine - iOS
• Graphics: Buffer Usage flag for Stage3D
• Mobile Workers (concurrency) - Android
• Support for native resources access by R* mechanism in native extension - Android
• Stage3D Creation of Context3D with Profile Array
• Support for Android 4.4 (KitKat)
• Mac .pkg Installation Support
• Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7 Support
• Enhanced Supplementary Character Support for TextField
• New Stage3D Texture Wrapping Modes
• Stage3D Anti-Aliasing for Texture Rendering
• GamePreview with Adobe AIR
• Anisotropic Filtering
• New Stage3D "Standard" Profile
• Intel x86 Android Support
• AIR Gamepad
• Relaxing Stage3D Render Target Clear
• Improved support for browser zoom levels - Windows 8
• Flash Player Fullscreen Orientation Change - Windows
• Hardware video decoding on Chrome (PPAPI)
• Automatic software fall back with StageVideo
• Stage3D “Standard” profile support for iOS and Android
• StageText.drawViewPortToBitmapData now supports Retina displays
• AIR Gamepad Enhancements
• AIR Cross Promotion

We look forward to continuing this work in 2015 and beyond. 

I'm going to allow replies for a few more days, then will be closing this thread as it's close to a year old and I don't think anything new is really being added here.

[rewb0rn]

Thanks for taking part in the discussion Chris! I think some of the listed features (Anisotropic filtering, Cross promotion, Gamepad Enhancements) are quite big. To this day Air stands as a great choice for developing crossplatform games, it does not leave much to wish for. We all hope Adobe's commitment will last for the next decade.

I know I can not expect any response to this, but it has been discussed that Flash / Air does not generate a lot of revenue for Adobe and therefore resources have been removed. That's why I would like to repeat that I and many others would be willing to pay license fees for extended features, like Windows phone or Microsoft Universal app deployments through Air. Maybe that's an option for the future.

Aside from that, have possiblities of cooperation with Autodesk been evaluated, regarding the AS3 VM? The Scaleform renderer for ActionScript is quite efficient on mobile devices, so it would seem.

[User_Unknow]

Here is how we use AIR Developing dental medical application for touch display using Adobe AIR - YouTube and it definitely alive!

[interactivenyc]

We're having great success with AIR too for IOS and Android tablets and phones. It's a 5 star subscription based interactive storybook market for kids that emphasizes reading skills:

Speakaboos Stories: 150+ Interactive Children’s Books, Read Along Videos & Educational Songs for Pre...

I'm personally tired of the griping about Adobe. Certainly I've got my own criticisms that I've put out there at various times, but to go on and on and on about it is ridiculous. Stop acting like a bunch of babies. If it's not working for you, try something else. You can't say the AIR team has been doing nothing - I've seen AIR updated every few weeks with important things. It's not just a matter of trying to improve performance and add new features, it's keeping up with existing technology. If Adobe wasn't putting great care into AIR, they would have been left behind many times by Apple who are constantly changing the requirements to get an app in the AppStore.

Is anyone else excited about WebGL output? Being able to use Flash in modern browsers without requiring a plugin is definitely an important step towards staying relevant.

The biggest criticism I'd like to offer Adobe is that they should spend more marketing money addressing the "Flash is dead" meme. It's a bunch of bullshit, the technology is still great as it ever was. We just need to convince people in decision making roles in technology spending that choosing Flash is not a mistake, but a wise money-saving solution.

-steve warren

[cristiandeidaho]

Chris, when is this conference going to be?

[Oldes]

cristiandeidaho napsal(a):

Chris, when is this conference going to be?

Flash Online Conference #10 with Adobe

https://plus.google.com/events/c52oqpn90nkh45nac5aunoq0kho