AIR 2.7 now available for desktop, Android, iOS and Blackberry Tablet OS.
When I think about the new features in AIR 2.7 I can’t help but think about this Daft Punk song… Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. That’s exactly what this release is all about… Well… You know what I mean ;-)
On mobile my favorite new feature is the improved rendering on iOS. With this release AIR apps for iOS render up to 4x faster in CPU mode. This change will improve the performance of many AIR for iOS apps, including those built with the Flex framework.
But don’t believe our words for it… Try it out yourself! There are already some really cool AIR apps in the appstore today. Try the Rossignol app for instance.
Or try one of Terry Paton’s games like Meteor Storm or Mazeball!
Another one of my favorite new features is probably the most requested feature for AIR for Android. You can now install or move the AIR runtime onto the SD cards within your Android devices!
An update for Flash Builder will be released soon but you can already grab the AIR SDK today and start building your apps!
MWC wrap-up: my favorite devices
While sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home from Mobile World Congress I thought it was a good idea to sum up some of my favorite MWC announcements. One thing that definitely stood out was Android. The little green robot was everywhere! Google provided all their partners with Android candy and a robot display. This was also the first time that Google had a booth at MWC and it was the talk of the town! It was one of the biggest booths on the show floor and was always crowded. I’m guessing the slide and the giveaways had something to do with that.
Google asked a bunch of developers and partners to showcase their Android app on their booth and I think that really worked. Adobe partner Condé Nast showed off Wired Magazine and The New Yorker on a Motorola Xoom on the Android booth. The electronic versions of Wired and The New Yorker are built with Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite.
MWC was full of tablets. The Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the LG OptimusPad all look very interesting. NVidia even showed the LG OptimusPad with Flash Player 10.2 on Honeycomb! My favorite was definitely the HTC Flyer. Well… That and the PlayBook.
I really like the HTC Sense UI and HTC seems to have done a fantastic job at building a tablet specific version of the Sense UI. Sadly they were only showing it behind glass so they probably still have a bit of work to do. The specs look great though and this is high on my wish list. I also like BlackBerry’s PlayBook. RIM made a balsy move by opting for a brand new OS instead of picking one that already exists. And you know what… It works… The PlayBook is incredibly fast and the UI brings a nice breath of fresh air to the soon to be crowded tablet market. It’s completely different from anything else on the market. I also like the touch enabled bezel on the PlayBook.
There were also plenty of new smartphones at MWC. The ones that really popped out were the Samsung Galaxy S2, the LG Optimus 2X and the HTC Incredible S. The Galaxy S2 is incredibly light. It’s so light that it felt like there was no battery inside. The LG Optimus 2X is also very light and it runs on NVidia’s Tegra 2 making it incredibly fast. My favorite was again an HTC device. The Incredible S looks more or less like what I have in my Desire HD except that it’s faster and has a front facing camera.
Oh… I should probably say that all of the devices mentioned in this post have Flash Player preinstalled and there were dozens of other devices that also come with Flash Player preinstalled. These are just my favorites. It’s been an amazing show and I already look forward to next year’s edition.
Motorola teasing a new tablet
2011 is going to be an interesting year! Apple has undoubtedly done an excellent job with the iPad but it has it’s obvious flaws. While they are currently the market leader in tablets the game is changing rapidly. With CES just a few weeks away big brands are starting to tease some of their announcements. (Man… I wish I could be at CES this year! So much cool stuff coming!) Motorola created this interesting teaser that doesn’t really say anything and yet says so much…
BTW… I’m doing a little bit of research on tablets and tablet applications. If you have a few minutes I would really appreciate it if you took the time to fill out this short survey.
Research: What’s your favorite tablet app and why?
The holidays are always a good time to do a little bit of research and since tablets are obviously going to be the next hot thing I thought about doing some research on tablet apps. I need your help though.
What I’d like to find out is what your favorite tablet apps are and why. I’d also like to hear from you if you currently do not own a tablet. To make this as easy as possible I created a Google Docs form. It would be a great help if you could take a few minutes to share your thoughts. Thanks in advance!
1 code base, 6 devices: Now including BlackBerry PlayBook
A couple of weeks ago I published a post about a proof-of-concept application that I built for a local commercial broadcaster. The app that I built in just 5 hours ran on 5 different devices. As I just started playing around with the BlackBerry PlayBook SDK I wanted to see how long it would take to push this app to the PlayBook. I was pleasantly surprised that it just worked! It only took me 2 minutes. So I can now say: 1 code base, 5 hours, 6 devices! It now runs on my desktop/laptop, HTC Desire HD (Android smartphone), Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android tablet), Google TV, AIR for TV, and now the BlackBerry PlayBook. And that, my friends, is the power of the Flash Platform! ;-) It’s a great time to be a Flash developer!
When you look at the video you will see one small flaw in my app though. The preloader screen doesn’t adapt to the bigger screen resolution so that will be the only thing I would have to update. Everything else is exactly the same code as the Android version of the application.
To get started building applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook check out the BlackBerry developer site. My fellow evangelist Renaun Erickson also has a ton of information about developing for the PlayBook on his blog!
Please note that the PlayBook emulator currently does not output audio from Flash video files and currently only plays videos that are encoded with the On2 VP6 codec. This is only a limitation because of the beta quality of the emulator.
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