Adobe Air bids adieu to Linux, shifts focus to mobile (engadget.com)

3 points·deltriggah··3 comments

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/16/adobe-air-bids-adieu-to-linux-shifts-focus-to-mobile/

We built a major application with Adobe Air.

Never again.

Apart from the glacial slowness of ActionScript, the massive memory consumption, the CPU hogging, the lack of focus on improvements to existing features (instead constantly building fancy new stuff) consider this one thing: Adobe Air does not support HTTP 1.1 - every request creates a new server connection. Last time I looked at a calendar it was 2011. Unbelievable.

Not a recommended platform for development and the idea of it running on a phone or pad - jeepers. At first I thought Steve Jobs was being harsh with his criticism of Flash but I totally understand now.

Adobe hasn't had a real "focus" since John Warnock left the building years ago. M&A isn't a "vision thing" and now the company is floundering. They built their stack during the golden age of the PC which looking back at it lasted from the 80s until last year, and now it's too late. Adobe won't die but will fade or will be purchased in time just like the mainframe makers were eaten up by the PC companies. I'd love to see Apple buy them out but my guess is that their messy legacy would be unappealing to a company that values clean interface design — although they might be worth it for the patents.

So its one final FU to alternative platform users before Adobe have slided into total irellevancy.

Goodbye, and thanks for making my Linux desktop exprience harder than it needed to be for all those years.

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