One Ring to Rule them All?
Is Adobe closing in on the one, common, cross-platform, development solution?
Yesterday they announced updates to the Flash toolkit to allow for cross compilation and output of native iPhone applications. This means that the million plus Flash/Actionscript developers can now use Adobe tools to create and publish apps to Apples app store.
A nice piece by Hank Williams got me thinking about this. Seems like its a win win for Adobe and Apple. Apple gets a ton of new developers, and a potential deluge of new apps as those developers port existing Flash games to the iPhone/iTouch. Adobe gets to extend its reach and add credence to its Open Screen project .
There’s another aspect to it however. For the last couple of weekends I’ve been working on a little side project that my son Nick requested. I’m using Adobe Air to compile Actionscript code into a cross platform desktop executable that runs on his PC and my Mac. There are some annoying glitches (like I can’t get the program icon to show on his machine), but in general its a really nice way to develop a rich desktop app - local database, file access and windowing control included - without having to mess with the Apple and/or Microsoft stacks or development environments.
But as of today, that same tool-set and skill-set that I’ve been using to build web apps like TextFlows, and desktop apps like Mood Maestro, can also be used to build iPhone apps, and soon maybe apps for any smart phone. Thats pretty sweet!
Has Adobe squared the circle?
