In fall 2010 Adobe reintroduced the “packager” for iOS on their Labs site which allowed developers to cross compile Flash and AS3 projects to apps that ran on iOS. Spring 2011 Flash Builder 4.5 was released which included a version of ADT that included the iOS packager and enabled the FB build process (no command line mess) to create iOS apps from AS3-only projects. Missing from FB 4.5, however, was the ability to create a Flex-based mobile projects targeted for iOS. It was still possible to use the command line to craft a command to get ADT to build an iOS app out of your Flex Mobile project. But running this app on an iPad showed that Flex Mobile via AIR on iOS was not quite ready for primetime; the performance was not great.

The recent release of AIR 2.7 has changed all that. With this release Flex mobile apps run with “native” performance on iOS. The difference is astounding! It’s just magical. I have no idea how they did it, but kudos to the Adobe engineers.

This has paved the way for Flash Builder 4.5.1 to now support iOS in the Flex Mobile AIR project wizard. You will now see three target platforms: Apple iOS, Blackberry Tablet OS and Google Android. How sweet is that? It’s only going to get better.

The version of AIR in FB 4.5.1 release is confusing, however. Officially, FB 4.5.1 uses and supports AIR 2.6. However if you build an iOS app it will indeed use AIR 2.7 to build it. This is confusing! You would think that Adobe would sync the release of AIR 2.7 with their FB 4.5.1 release but it looks like that did not happen. I’m sure that the next update to FB will fix this.

Flash Builder 4.5.1 is available as an updater patch for FB 4.5. If you don’t have FB 4.5 installed you can download a 60 day trial from here.

This story hit home with me recently because my own iPhone App, RunningMap Trackometer, has been getting a few bad reviews on the US App Store. (you can see my blog post about it here). This is obviously devastating for sales and shows how important reviews are. My first thought was to get some friends to post some good reviews to counter the bad ones. And it would be easy to do. But think twice if you think its a good idea.

The problem of bad reviews is exacerbated by the fact that when you uninstall an app, you are prompted to review the app which I am sure encourages far more bad reviews than good ones. Ouch. Apple’s review system is broken!

Not so fast. There are some subtleties here. The App Store will show reviews only for the “current version” while hiding the rest under the “all versions” button. The App Store also prominently shows “what’s new in version …” so there is hope!

What will I do with my Trackometer app? Fix it. Improve it. Earn some better reviews. My customers will be able to see that I have read about their concerns and improved on the product. But I won’t fake the reviews.

First there was getting a phone. In Canada we had to wait a year and a few days after the July 11, 2008 launch I phone Rogers and ordered one. Two days later it arrived. I plugged it into my mac, agreed to a few things and let is sync. VERY seamless and easy to set up and use. Rogers service was very good (aside from a few glitches in the billing which they politely fixed).

Second the phone itself. It is amazing. The functionality and features. FINALLY I have a phone that will sync seamlessly with my Mac address book.

Thirdly the app store. I am taking the perspective of a software developer who is approved for the iPhone Developer Program and has plans on building and selling iPhone applications. What they have created with the app store is revolutionary and awesome. Apple has put power to the developers. Thanks Apple.

Here is a link to a designer behind the New York Times application: http://www.drawger.com/felixsockwell/?section=comments&article_id=5804