November 22nd, 2009 . by polygeek
Why isn’t there an Adobe AIR operating system by now? Seems like all you would need is to customize one of the Linux distros to automatically run an AIR app on startup that would act as the interface to the OS. What you would end up with is a light weight OS that would be easy to develop apps for. This would be perfect for netbooks just like the Google Chrome OS.
And the pieces are really falling into place with the enhancements to AIR 2.0 and the Flash Player 10.1.
I think litl is doing something like this but my understanding is that they are using Flash lite for now.
I’m I nuts or is it just a matter of time?
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Posted in Tags: Adobe/Microsoft/Google, AIR
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14 Comments »
Nope, your nuts. Air is an ideal development environment because it's cross platform. If we are honest with ourselves, it's not the best at memory management. I'm thinking about what the operating system really does (abstract hardware communications, manage resources and install applications), and I'm not sure that Air is really good at any of those operations. Maybe I'm wrong and it's right around the corner. But if so, I'm guessing that it'll just be a simple UI layer.
I agree with Matt. Why abstract the OS even further? For kiosks this makes sense, but think of all the hardware and native applications you would also need to interface with. The idea has been tried before with "web-based OS" many times and has failed each time. The OS does what it does nicely, and if you need to restrict the OS to perform certain functions or limit user interfaction you can do so via policy and security. So, memory management concerns aside (and they are a huge issue with current vwersions of AIR), there's really no need to do this except in very specialized cases.
Yeah.. Sounds pretty nutsy to me.
Just because Google is going crazy with 'no native applications' on their OS it doesn't mean that Adobe AIR can be used for such. AIR needs a host operating system. Why would one develop an operating system to run on the top of another? That's not even lightweight, as you say.
@polyGeek, I'll retract my statement only because when everyone things it's a crazy idea, it's probably a good idea. If Air really goes cross platform and cross screen types (mobile -> jumbotron) then why wouldn't someone build an additional abstracted layer to manage some of the transition issues. And there's a ton of AS developers out there so I don't see why a plugin architecture couldn't be built on top of it. The only question mark I would have is calling it an OS.
fwiw, I've been seeing this a little from the side… ChromeOS is _labeled_ as an operating system, but it seems more a task-specific device, like the Litl, where a low-level operating system is not the main interface as in general computers.
Suppose you could sell a device which was optimized for certain tasks, whether displaying photos or using Google web apps or something else — how would that differ from just selling an application which needs to work well atop _any_ device…?
jd/adobe
I dont really see AIR OS coming out of Adobe anytime soon. Remember even the Google OS is just linux booting into a browser. Adobe would first have to make an AIR browser. But then would they be able to support competing plugins like Silverlight? And that market is pretty crowded.
Honestly though, I would like to see an Adobe Flash/AIR OS for mobile devices. That could be kind of cool. Flash is the UI tier for some devices anyway (cameras etc). Hmmm…and android version with all UI handled by Flash and designed by the XD team? (I really dont like the UI on Android phones yet)
Matt
