Comments on: Adobe AIR: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it.

By: Bob Long

Bob Long — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:02:04 +0000

I arrived here in a search about what AIR’s raison d’etre is.
I’m no techie, and I don’t understand most of the tech issues above, but from a consumer’s standpoint, I see traces of sinister design at Adobe. The latest update of Media Viewer made itself the default viewer of all of my videos. It’s like getting a virus from Adobe. So screw ‘em. Thanks to a (somewhat) free market, there are plenty of other viewers, and it felt great to uninstall it.
Control freaks, petty tyrants, and self-righteous buffoons who like to run other people’s lives have been coming out of the woodwork lately, at all levels of government, education, business, social sciences, engineering, etc. Speed bumps barely existed 40 years ago, and none of the sinister traffic-annoyers that have popped up in the last 10 years. Some “educators” have broadened the definitions of “violence” and “bullying” to make miscreants of rambunctious innocents while instituting zero-tolerance policies to drag them into their wider net. Our president talks a lot about what he will or won’t “tolerate,” from Congress and US citizens, and businesspeople have behaved with utter disregard for ethics, decency and the welfare of other people.
Bill Gates is right to be doing philanthropy, to make up for his pushing the envelope of business ethics to the ripping-point, with his anti-competitive, anti-American practices. Intel got on the same bandwagon. Grasping control-freaks monopolists. The incidence of socially retarded outcasts seems a bit higher in the tech sectors than in the general population, so I guess one shouldn’t expect an easy, familiar ethical intuition to come out well formed in those individuals. And apparently, there are some of them at Adobe.

By: Brent Hodgson

Brent Hodgson — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:49:35 +0000

Hi Bill,

I saw your comment and wanted to reply straight away – I don’t want people getting the wrong idea or misinformation about security inside Market Samurai.

There’s certainly nothing malicious about Market Samurai’s code, and in terms of security, the guys in development have been meticulous with making sure Market Samurai is as safe and secure to use as possible.

You’re right – Market Samurai has “Unrestricted” access – but this access is no more or less than any other software would have.

The difference is a big red icon appears forewarning you about this in Market Samurai / Adobe AIR – whereas other applications will hide and obfuscate the facts inside a complex EULA.

So what does “Unrestricted” access look like?

You’ll notice that on the download page (inside the download instructions) we refer to this:

Adobe Air will ask whether you wish to give Market Samurai the ability to access your system. Market Samurai needs this access to:

* Connect to the internet in order to perform keyword research;
* Store searches in a local database file so that it can quickly analyze results;
* Automatically keep itself up to date; and
* Save search results to disk

Market Samurai does not use this access for anything other than the above functions.

And, you’ll also notice that Market Samurai is one of the few Adobe AIR applications that is digitally signed for your protection.

There ARE other pieces of software out there that have some similar features to Market Samurai – but it would take around 8 other software programs and subscription services (each costing $79-$326) to get a set of similar features.

I’m not particularly worried about sales – but I do want to make sure people get the right information.

I’d hate to see people making decisions based on fear – I’d always prefer that they were making educated decisions.

I hope this helps you out.

Brent Hodgson

By: bill foster

bill foster — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:22:29 +0000

Was going to buy software Market Samurai today
10/16/2008, but after seeing the warning from AIR Unrestricrted computer access I decided not to download the free trial, Shame I like the software but can’t take the risk.

I beleive this will cost this vendor lots of sales! Anyone know of any keyword tool like software Market Samurai?

Bill Foster

By: David

David — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:54:53 +0000

Hello,

Any Useful Air Applications Yet?
An interesting article despite some of very harsh comments written. Does anyone know of any good uses for Adobe Air yet? Most of the ones on the showcase seem a little gimmicky!

I did find one that was interesting here
http://www.newzdog.com

Any one else?

Cheers

By: tim

tim — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:16:13 +0000

@Le just wondered why Java is not on your list?

Tim

By: Le

Le — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:44:14 +0000

If I have to choose DHTML, Flash, Flex & Air, or Silverlight to develop a user interface touch screen application, which should I choose? Here are the rules:
1. System’s processor is limited in size and speed.
2. Linux is the operating system.
3. MySQL is the database.
4. User can touch the screen to interact with the application.
5. The user can also use a hand held device to interact with the application.
6. Application consists of information, videos, games, music player, etc.

Of all the options to choose, which would be best to develop and maintain in long term? Thanks.

By: TF

TF — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:32:29 +0000

The author has no clue what he’s talking about.

1/2 the points are false and the others are not accurate or completely irrelevant.

The only thing this article is good for is getting clicks for his blog. Other than that, he’s got no clue.

My favorite comment from him:

“Second, I don’t like it. Why should you have to give some little utility unrestricted system access? We can do better than that.”

Uh yeah, so go do something about it. Quit your sniveling.

I don’t like how cars can smash into each other and cause dents, but you don’t see me writing worthless inaccurate blog entries stating such.

Again, worthless.

By: hank scorpio

hank scorpio — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:41:34 +0000

Let’s not forget we’re discussing a 1.0 version release. Does anyone here recall Flash 1.0? See how it’s matured?

By: Green Boy

Green Boy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:22:59 +0000

So Adobe’s new AIR is:
1) Less secure than Java
2) Less flexible than Java
3) Slower than Java
4) Not available on UNIX or Linux
5) Not supported by Microsoft
6) Currently not available anywhere

Surely the only people who think AIR makes sense are programmers who only know Flash ? For them, this is great.

By: tim

tim — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:09:18 +0000

Monte

A recent post by Mike Chambers may answer this:

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/01/17/commandproxy-net-air-integration-proof-of-concept/

He states that launching native executables is not supported, but offers a workaround in the form of a command proxy.

Note that some reckon this is an insecure approach.

Tim