Los Angeles — Adobe, a provider of digital solutions for graphic and multimedia applications, and whose applications has been mocked at by Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a relic from a bygone PC age, is showing signs that it’s adapting to today’s computing realities, on Monday released Adobe Air 2.5, an updated set of development tools for TVs, tablets, smartphones, and desktop operating systems.
Hordes of Adobe applications remain industry staples — Photoshop for image editing and Flash Player for watching videos on the Web, for example. But new computing is growing in new directions with smartphones, tablets, and Net-connected TVs. This week at its Max conference for developers and others using Adobe tools, though, new-era software will take center stage.
With this release the big focus was on bringing the platform to new devices, mobiles and even TVs. Adobe AIR 2.5 for TV is the first full-fledged attempt at bringing Adobe-powered content to TV sets. The offering is an integral part of the company’s Adobe Flash Platform, and helps the developers in creating and delivering standalone applications across a number of devices and platforms.
“Since the past few years, many of the major manufacturers in the TV sector have started to bring applications to the TV screen, including video and audio streaming applications such as Netflix, Pandora, Vudu, Blockbuster, Rhaposdy, and Napster, but also news and infotainment applications,” Adobe writes.
Adobe wants to spread Flash and AIR to a multitude of computing devices. (Credit: Adobe Systems)
Adobe did have a version of Flash Lite for TV devices, but AIR 2.5 delivers full Flash support, moreover, support for all of the capabilities of the AIR platform. A few new APIs have been added and others have been optimized for the specifics of these devices.
“We have built a tuned and optimized version of AIR that is designed to work on TV hardware,” Adobe said.
For now, the announcement of AIR 2.5 for TV concerns mostly developers since no devices are shipping with support for the platform. Adobe’s new version of its Flash-based AIR app platform, comes with some novel features that will allow developers to write and package creations to run on televisions.
The solution is bundled with various new capabilities, such as support for smartphones and tablets based on BlackBerry Tablet OS, Android, iOS, and desktops based upon miscellaneous operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
First is an extension to InDesign layout and publishing software that will empower the Creative Suite software with the ability to target tablets with interactive content. Today that means Apple iPads, but tomorrow it will mean a host of competitors, too. We could see the proliferation of app stores where you use your TV remote to browse streaming apps like those from Amazon or Netflix, then purchase, download and install an app by pressing a few buttons.
While AIR for TV aims to provide an experience on par with what it brings to the desktop and devices such as tablets, there are some specifics to consider. Samsung is the first television manufacturer that will include support for Adobe AIR 2.5 in its Samsung SmartTVs and some other companies such as Acer, HTC, Motorola and RIM will introduce a number of devices including tablets and smartphones with pre-installed runtime, later this year and early 2011.
“With the release of AIR 2.5 for TV, Adobe is overtly excited to have Samsung as a launch partner, bringing the best platform for building rich content together with the largest TV and Blu-ray maker,” Adobe wrote.
Any developer creating a mobile app in AIR can now bundle their app for sale in the Android Market. This should also be a bonus for developers eager to build an app for Google TV, which runs Android. Adobe also mentioned that it is working with device makers to pre-install AIR on new Android phones, making the process of installing AIR-based apps as painless as possible for consumers.
“With the release of Air 2.5, more than 3 million Flash developers can now create a single game or application and easily deploy it across multiple application stores and devices,” David Wadhwani, senior vice president of Creative and Interactive Solutions Business at Adobe, said in a statement. “This is a big step forward for developers looking to build rich, engaging applications but who have historically had to incur the cost of building them separately for each device and platform.”
Another thrilling news in Adobe’s Monday announcement is the launch of InMarket, an app warehouse where developers can submit their creations to multiple app stores at once. InMarket will be a portal of sorts. A developer submits their app to the central server, and Adobe packages that app for each store that allows the sale of AIR apps. The same app can be morphed to run on Android phones, tablets, televisions and, of course, desktop PCs. Adobe handles all the packaging, distribution and billing, and takes a 30 percent cut of the sale price for its trouble.
For years, Adobe has been touting its AIR foundation as a way to bring Net-enabled applications to a variety of devices, but only now is it beginning to arrive on high-end mobile devices–starting with Android phones. Recently this month, Kulabyte Corporation, a provider of high-quality HD video streaming facilities, extended its encoder integration to include the new features of Adobe Flash Media Server 4 software.