Flash, iPhones, Androids, and my next book

Everyone and their dog has weighed in on the recent decision from Apple in their latest iPhone SDK to allow only apps made with their toolset to be approved in the App Store.  I’ve held commenting to see what Adobe would ultimately say.  Today, they said it.  No more Flash-to-iPhone.  I’m personally very disappointed by this, but the writing was on the wall.  Apple has no incentive to change their position and Adobe doesn’t really have any recourse, other than to go another direction.

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At the end of last week I was asked by Adobe (as someone who submitted a Flash CS5 iPhone app to the iTunes store) to port my game to the new AIR for Android platform that has recently been announced.  After getting resized art, it took me about 2 hours start to finish to port the game and get it running on a Google Nexus One.  You can see a video of it below.  If it weren’t for a known bug in the prerelease version of AIR for Android, it would have taken me even less time, but I had to swap out my use of TweenMax for GTween.  Tedious prerelease hurdles aside, this workflow is INFINITELY easier than Apple’s developer “initiation” process.  Once I had my SWF published, it took me less than a minute to package it with AIR and push it to the phone.  I’m sure this will get even easier as Adobe refines the publishing process in subsequent releases.  Performance-wise, the Nexus One seems on par or slightly faster than my iPhone 3Gs.  I’m looking forward to see how more intensive apps perform on this platform.

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You may have heard (since I announced it on this site) that I’ve been working on a follow-up book covering iPhone game creation in Flash Cs5.  Obviously Apple’s recent dick move has made this pretty much a dead topic.  I’ll post again when I have any further announcements regarding that book.  In the mean time, check out Three Card Monte on the Android, courtesy of YouTube.

Real-World Flash Game Development Wins Newberry Medal for Children’s Fiction!

April Fool’s!  While such an award would be an honor like no other, my book has yet to be recognized by the American Library Association.  You can, however, order a copy here.  In fact, you’d be a fool not to.