Adobe AIR

Originally, Adobe AIR was the only game in town, and its blend of flexibility in platforms it could publish to (PC, Mac, iOS, Android), ease of use, and familiarity made it the clear choice. Now Adobe no longer supports it, and we’ve found the transition to Harmon unworkable for us.

We already use all the other Adobe products so it was an easy choice to use AIR for our programming type of programs. As we used it more, we found that it was very simple to learn/the learning curve was not very steep at all. We honestly didn't look at any other options, because we all agreed that we wanted to go with the Adobe product.

Adobe AIR does not support Windows phones but works well on both Android and Apple iOS. It enables developers to build and deploy good quality applications to mobile platforms for a majority of mobile users and allows developers to build working prototypes in a relatively short period of time. It also helps if the developer is familiar with Flash.

There are definitely other platforms out there that are awesome but Adobe AIR is just what our other developers were used to using but we do have some success.

Generally stacks up fairly negatively, program definitely has its place, I appreciate what it can allow but now most desktop apps are fine enough as browser based experiences or for personal use mobile is the way to go. Air isn't the best environment for that.

Appcelerator is open source and is very good, but my company wanted something more business-oriented and with more formal support.

Originally, Adobe Air was a great choice for us to build mobile titles from prior web titles when compared to tools such as native iOS with cocos2d. We were able to get games stood up much faster than our competition and out to market to make money. That said, as Unity improved its 2D capabilities, we ended up switching over to that as the support, performance, and tools ultimately eclipsed what was available to us with Flash/Air.

Adobe AIR is more friendly to a serious programmer because it supports core programming methodology in a way that Unity does not. Both AIR and Unity have a hidden underlying layer of event management code that can add performance costs. However, Unity is more friendly to a beginner or a designer who has not studied programming principles. It has better error reporting and documentation.

Since Adobe AIR can be used with the Flash IDE, there are not many other solutions with such a robust toolset. The ability to import layered photoshop files directly onto the stage, and then ability to animate and create movieclips within that IDE is an extremely valuable resource. Not many other solutions offer this. The closest competitor would be Unity3D, however animating within Unity is vastly different. Compared to PhoneGap/Cordova, the pricing and build process is very similar, however since PhoneGap/Cordova rely on browser rendering (like webkit), the types of UI possible can be limited, and performance lacking compared to AIR. The biggest comparison is when developing graphic/animation intense programs and apps. For these, Unity3D and Unreal tend to be a much better solution.