My MAX Wishlist

Chad Udell
Posted on October 5, 2009 Category: Discover

My MAX Wishlist

So, I’m not going to MAX this year… The economy has made a lot of extra spending go away and conferences are no exception to this rule. I do plan on virtually attending the webcasts and keynotes this year, though, so I definitely am staying in the loop.

I’m not putting together a prediction list, but rather a wishlist… Will any of these happen? I dunno, but I do know they would make my life in the Adobe universe better and more productive.

  1. AIR on iPhone – It’s unlikely that I am going to be learning Objective C anytime soon. And while I would love to take a stab at creating an app on the iPhone, this is really about the only way to do it. If I could compile an AIR app for the iPhone, this would help bridge that gap.
  2. A release date for Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst – Believe it or not, I’ve been using these tools for some time on real work. Flash Builder a bit more, but I have been able to get some nice stuff out of Catalyst from time to time. I’d like a formalized release schedule and a price so I can put it in my budget ASAP and get it on my team’s desktops for real.
  3. Some word on what the Omniture buyout means for Flash platform analytics – Is it going to be a LiveCycle product? A Flash Platform SaaS? What? How can I get integrating this into my experiences and RIAs?
  4. A bit more concrete info on AIR 2.0’s deeper features – FOTB leaked that C++ and other API integration was coming, but what about Google Earth? Open GL? BYOAPI (Bring your own API)
  5. More Hardware acceleration control and/or better threading/CPU support. – Building 1080P+ experiences on Flash sucks. There I said it. I’ve been burned enough over the last couple of years to know this. At The Iona Group we often build large HD resolution kiosks, presentations, installations etc. We prefer using Flash for our rich media development. These two things collide in unpleasant ways more often than they should. In many ways, Director is still more capable at performing in world class fashion at high high resolution. Processing is too. This could be for Flash Player 11, AIR 2.0 or whatever… Just the sooner, the better. Grant Skinner has made pleas to Adobe to improve CPU usage and performance, so maybe that will be enough.

So there you have it… not sure if any of these will happen, but it sure would be grand if they did. What are you putting on your MAX Wishlist?

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