Adobe AIR and the iPhone

Recently I was at an Adobe conference in Sydney. The conference was aimed at media professionals and was all about the Flash Media Server. I felt like a fish at a fashion parade with all the video-editing talk, but there were some very juicy titbits dropped along the way.

During the conference, the news bomb was dropped that Adobe had removed licensing from their SWF and FLV formats. This is under their new “Open Screen Project” which is aimed at getting Adobe Flash content out there on all screens, without manufacturers having to pay licensing fees.

When I asked about the iPhone and AIR, I was told by a Senior Consultant at Adobe that their hope with the OSP was that companies such as Apple would now consider deploying the Flash Player (or Flash Player Lite) onto their devices. He finished by adding that who knows, maybe even Microsoft would develop their own Flash player (with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek). From a managed-code development point of view (Java/C#/AS3 in the MX framework), this is exciting stuff. Fingers crossed, we can develop our AIR apps to work in the iPhone as well.

Of course, in the iPhone’s case, Apple has opened the SDK for developers (currently with a $100 price tag and a US only limitation – boo.) But what developer, settled into OO principals and managed-code, wants to go back to C++ style coding with Objective-C? OK, I’m sure there’s a few of you out there, but personally, it feels like going backwards.

Hmmm…

I’ve got pages of questions for Adobe when I hit their AIR conference next month (also the month that we all suspect the iPhone to be released in Australia), so hopefully i’ve have more answers then.