The Future of Adobe AIR

mistergreen

Dimensionscape I think you're making the right choice. AIR certainly is not in its prime. It is heading to or is at its end of life. There's no polishing AIR beyond bug support and OS updates that justifies the pricing tier.

hugo

This only came to reinforce, that I was not wrong and did a good decision, when I jumped to another platform on mobile a few days ago !
I will not be a forced.

So, I'm using AIR exclusively for Desktop now, so, there will be no news on that area until 2020, so I will happy keep may AIR 30, thank you
I'm care now, only about Desktop and there is no big issue on that field, so basically Harman need to prove me that price.

Honestly, about the price, I see on 2 prospects (I already pay SaaS and this price exceeds any product that I pay, no doubt):

They will release non sense new features for AIR as Adobe did on the last years (I read here and there that no ones know what this new fancy features are) and Harman will not get my money !
They will release new ultra-super-exciting new features and I may pay for it

In resume and inspired on the spider-man, uncle : With great price, comes great features 🙂 🙂

Bink

I'm happy to pay the fees Harman detailed, especially if it sees continued support.

Flash/AIR is an exceptional and mature framework and to date, I've not had to pay a cent for it despite developing with it for over a decade, unless you count my Adobe CC subscription, but that wasn't required.

So, paying a reasonable sum of money for it now seems only fair, considering what it's made for me. I'm happy to see it continue and despite it's age, it's still not only viable, it's still frequently the best option for the job when it comes to many of my projects, as determined by API feature support, performance, reliability and speed to develop.

That said, I also use other languages and frameworks, depending on the needs of the job. I'm not going to say from now on I will only use [insert something here]. AIR is a part of the toolkit and it serves me to get my stuff done.

fftidus

When the roadmap came out, I will decide whether to pay for it.

hugo

First, what is $25kpa ? $25.000 per year ?
Supposing, so.

I would expect something different for the 3 starting tiers:
Free Tier: If your App is free (OK, for the splash screen)
Personal ($9/month or $99/year - similar to the Apple subscription): Income less than $25kpa
Professional ($14.99/month or $149/year): Income less than $50kpa

For example, about the second tier and my expectations:

If I would pay for instance $50/year, I would expect the same as Adobe give us on the last 2 year. I mean, making AIR plugged to the survival machine). I would not expect great new features but only someone that cares about minimum OS/marketplaces requirements to exists (like 64 bits feature on Android).
If I would pay for instance $99/year, I would expect what I mention on point 1 + improvements / new small occasional functionality but nothing transcending.
If I would pay for instance $149/year, I would expect what I mentioned on point 2 + real cool new features (new HTML component for loading Google Maps on Mobile and desktop), SQLite updated, Toast wihout ANE's, etc ...
For the price they request: $199/year, I'm expecting much more, I mean everything from the point 3 + Linux full support + real cool new features.

For those who depend on Android and do not prepare themselves with the argument that they would use AIR while they existed (any AIR Mobile programmer depends on Android), they are completely in their hands and can complain but they will pay (ho, yes, they will pay).

They may even say it is temporary while they are migrating now, but I doubt the majority who did not migrate migrate now and will continue to pay.
So, this immediately means starting a good fit for them.
I for one hand I even understand, because there should not be so many AIR programmers out there and therefore have to raise the price to compensate.

For those who do not depend on Mobile, you might as well live with AIR 32 (even with AIR 30 because there's no news on the Desktop for a long time) and not have to pay a cent, however this should be a much lower developer base which will not affect their accounting as much.

hardcoremore

@hugo I don't know where did you get those numbers for pricing. I got this

hardcoremore

Pricing its not problem. The problem is that they have put down developers in situation where they are asking for ransom or blackmailing us because of 64bit development.

Why are they not giving 64bit version for free to show that they are serious and to gain trust of the community. And after that they can charge money of course because there are a lot of features to be added and a lot of optimizations to be implemented in AIR for destkop, ios and android.

This way they tricked us where we need to pay for AIR but never knowing the future of it or the quality of AIR that will be produced. They can charge money after 64bit implementation. They still need to:

1) Fix GPU memory leak in windows.

2) Increase GPU texture memory limit.

3) Fix all kind of wierd memory allocations on ios like using === sing when comparing number or memory allocation when instancing vectors of non primitive type.

4) Implement object pooling when using native apis.

5) Implement 64bit ADT.

6) Improve performance. Even nodejs is faster than AIR and it is not even typed like AS3. Thats depressing.

7) Improve workers and multithreading.

8) Improve Sound API and fix bugs like delays on Android.

There are so much more they can and need to do in later versions. But charging money now when we are desperate is not a good move.

Dimensionscape

hardcoremore I think it would be appropriate if they charged a one time license fee for AIR 33 and used their pricing plan on AIR 34+...but that is just my opinion.

Dimensionscape

hardcoremore I don't understand what you are complaining about. They ARE giving you 64 bit android SDK for free.

The other alternative is that Adobe could have closed the book on AIR and there never would have been android 64x.

Beggars can't be choosers. Either move on, endure a splash screen or pay them, it's that simple. That is not blackmail, that's business. I think its really unfair to say disparaging thing and accuse them of a crime.

hugo

@hardcoremore You may not carefully read my post (that prices is what I was expecting and my considerations and expectations).

Yes, this a strategy and yes, many, many AIR devs will pay, indeed.
However I don't agree with you.
They should not let Android-64 bits as free.

The one, that should point a finger and have done this a long time ago and failed on 2 last release was Adobe.
Perhaps, this was planned. I don't know and fortunately I was expecting for this and prepared my self.

Many said, "I will use AIR as long I can and you are you're wasting your time evaluating other tech".
Well, now they got a commitment and can pay for it (a lot) 🙂

hugo

@Dimensionscape This is against SaaS and will remove their chance to start getting a lot of money from the very beginning.

Dimensionscape

hugo There is not just one SaaS model and I didn't specify how much they should charge.

hugo

"There is not just one SaaS model"
What do you mean ?
For me in SaaS model, I will never "own" the product.
It's a subscription.
For instance netflix. If you stop paying, you stop watching.

There is indeed an anomaly that I saw so far.
IntelliJ, after one year, you get the oldest version forever but without updates if you stop paying, however it's require a minimum of one year payment.

Dimensionscape

hugo Yes, I can stream movies on amazon prime, but I can also buy a movie. You say SaaS like there is one specific business model.

hugo

@Dimensionscape If you buy, it's not SaaS (at least, as far as I know).
SaaS (Software as a Service), you pay as you go.
The opposite, you purchase a perpetual license for a specific version (sometimes with one year of minor updates).

If they sell one version of AIR, that's totally fine, that specific version would be out of the SaaS model (sometimes, vendors, have mixed modes).
If they offer one specific version of AIR, as you suggested, then that version would be against commercial business model (at least on my point of view), unless, that specific version have less features that requires to purchase a more complete version.

Dimensionscape

hugo I'm well aware of what SaaS means, but its a very broad term.

hugo

For me, it's very clear as crystal ball.
I do SaaS as a vendor and I also consume SaaS as client.
I believe than in a near future, will be rare to have perpetual licenses.

Dimensionscape

This is against SaaS

You can have coexisting, complementing business models. You say it like it's the law of the land.

hugo

No, not on that way (at least what I meant to say).
What, I'm saying is that SaaS, implies subscription, so, if it's not a subscription then, it's not a SaaS.
Totally fine, in a mixed mode but as far as I understood, they want "pure" (you if prefer) SaaS/subscription model.

I understand their business model.
I do, exactly the same.
It's the future: Office 365, Invoice applications, etc ...
And it's not completely new from this decade: Antivirus, for instance.

BUT, one thing it's also true, on the SaaS model, the price usually it's low (very low and usually lower than that shared table), except if the market is also very low or very specific and on that use cases the price can be high.

htmiel

Regarding the future of Harman AIR, though I would absolutely love to stick with it, I have a few reasons to be a little skeptical.

First, I'll assume that the Harman team currently has the best intentions.

Part of the reason Harman got/purchased AIR from Adobe is that they themselves need and use it for their embedded enterprise solutions.

Now that they got it for themselves, they can also try to make a commercial product, offering AIR SDK for payment. The revenue should at least try to pay for the Harman AIR dev team.

How many AS3/Flash/AIR devs are there still? Veterans would most likely be willing to pay, and continue running on AIR. But what about new devs? How can Harman attract new devs? There's no official IDE and support for Animate is dubious (not to mention having to pay for Animate separately). The strength of AIR (coupled with Animate) is that it is probably one of the easiest and fastest dev platforms in the world, for non-hardcore coders.

Again, assuming the best intentions of Andrew and the Harman AIR team, if the AIR subscriptions revenue does not match Harman expectations, in 6 - 12 - 24 months, higher management might just pull the plug for the public side, and just keep it for themselves, for their embedded requirements, where probably nobody is forcing them to upgrade to 64 bit.

Just some thoughts.

Again, I love AIR and would love to continue using it, but Harman needs to step up and regain the confidence that Adobe completely crushed via their miss-management of AIR/Flash.

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