Recently in RIM Category

My son, Arthur, and I each developed apps for PlayBook under a developer challenge that RIM issued last fall. Now that the SDK is up to speed and Flash Builder 5.5 is out, apps are being made fast and furious. I am working on a blog entry on my Adobe Blog about using Flash CS5.5 and Flash Builder 5.5 to build one app and deploy it painlessly to iPhone, iPad, PlayBook, and Android. I am amazed at how easy it is to get the project done now.

The title is the provocative: Adobe Flash: 20m phones flip Steve Jobs the bird and it refers to the meteoric rise of Android phones. 

I am most intrigued by the claim that Steve Jobs' personal vendetta against Flash is the best thing to happen to Flash since, well, Flash. Jobs' claims of instability and of the player not being ready for mobile spurred Adobe in to high gear, and Flash Player 10.1 and 10.2 are the result.

The article also mentions that although Flash Player is forbidden on iOS devices, Adobe's AIR is allowed after a brief period where it was walled out by the terms of the Developer Agreement.

Since AIR is running on a plethora of Android and other devices as well as iOS, it seems that AIR is a smart choice for companies wishing to develop cross-platform applications quickly and with a minimum of recoding.

Add to this Adobe's next releases Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder (in public beta at Adobe Labs), which cater to multi-screen development, and you've got a complete app development environment for just about all screens. 

My son Arthur, who blogs about technology and creates YouTube training videos, took the challenge seriously. He dug into the public betas of Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst, got the PlayBook SKD, and went to town.

He developed in Flash Builder, which has several advantages to using the native language. Adobe includes many output paths from Flash Builder, including AIR Desktop, AIR for Android and (with the PlayBook SDK) PlayBook. It is also possible to package for iPhone, but it's a command line task as of yet. I do expect to see Flash Professional-like packaging in Flash Builder before too long, though. Having one development environment makes app creation, testing and deployment so much faster.

Along the way, he encountered one major hurdle in the development process: there's no device on which to test the app! While RIM offers a VMWare simulator, it lacks some key features like multi-touch screen interactions, accelerometer behaviors, geolocation, and more. While these features are accessible in apps, they are hard to simulate on a laptop.

Regardless, he got an app working and submitted to the store. The app is a browser for our CommuniPix service. He plans to expand it to be a more functional interface to the service, including camera access, in-ap ordering, and more. I look forward to seeing what he cooks up after he gets his hands on a device. Now, to get busy on my app...

The PlayBook has several things that set it apart from the others, however. The most obvious is its BlackBerry heritage, a feature that makes it immediately appealing to enterprise customers. The PlayBook is much more than a tablet that has a BlackBerry logo on it, however.

Technically, it's a screamer with a 1 GHz dual core processor and 1GB of RAM. Its 1024 x 600 touchscreen responds to at least 4 simultaneous touches, and perhaps more. In addition, its BlackBerry Tablet OS supports both Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR Mobile in addition to Java and other technologies.

I am interested in developing applications using AIR for Mobile, since I've had some experience with AIR for desktop and TV. Fortunately for me, RIM has made it easy to get connected to their developer tools.

In addition, they have a webinar series that puts developers in touch with smart folks who want to help expand the PlayBook developer network.

As an enticement to get people to write and publish PlayBook apps, RIM is offering free PlayBooks to developers who get an app into their AppWorld.

This is great for RIM and for developers, since it gives them the tools they need to build apps for the PlayBook. Also, since it will run AIR apps, I can write an AIR Mobile app that will play on PlayBook as well as Android devices and televisions. I believe that PlayBook and AIR Mobile will be a golden opportunity for developers of entertainment and enterprise apps alike.