RIM’s PlayBook and Adobe AIR

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Yesterday RIM announced their tablet computer, the PlayBook, with an impressive set of specs and what looks like a great form factor. But what I thought was the coolest part of the announcement is that Adobe AIR is going to play a central role in application development on the tablet. While there will be support for Java eventually and developers can use C++ to tie into things like OpenGL, Adobe AIR is the primary way to develop applications for the tablet.

In fact, a lot of the work on the tablet is already being done in AIR. The browser, the application launcher, and a lot of the default applications have been built using Adobe AIR. One of the cool things is that this is just one step in a long evolution of Flash. The company behind the tablet OS, QNX, was acquired by RIM back in April. QNX has long been a partner of Adobe and is one of the experts on porting Flash to different pieces of hardware. So they’ve got a ton of experience working in the guts of Flash and it sounds like a lot of that knowledge went into the AIR integration on the PlayBook.

So if you’re building AIR applications then this is one more place you’ll be able to bring those skills. You can get a jump on development by heading over to the labs page we have set up for the BlackBerry and of course, there will be a lot more good stuff at MAX, so you’ll want keep an eye on news coming out of LA for the latest.

Related posts:

  1. Enterprise Apps in the Cloud Just Got Better: Salseforce/Adobe Partnership
  2. New Adobe AIR Marketplace Launches
  3. HP’s Flash-enabled Tablet
  4. Adobe and RIM Collaborating on Tool Support for BlackBerry Devices
  5. Hands-On Review of Android Multi-touch Tablet
  • Nick Collins

    Personally, I think this is a great move on RIM’s part, it gives them a selection of apps for their platform that are ready to go right off the bat (like eBay Desktop and TweetDeck) and a ready developer community.

    One thing I think would be beyond cool is if they were to implement a lightweight remoting solution whereby they exposed a number of endpoints for accessing the functionality on the device, such as read/write of user information, PIM data, and other services that might be available on the device in the future, like GPS data.

  • http://www.hgarland.com Harry Garland

    So now I’m a playbook developer. It’s getting so hard to keep track of all the devices that I develop for.

  • Bradley

    As all the devices eventually roll out, its soooo exciting as a Flash dev.

  • Peter Kady

    What will be the monetization mechanism for AIR apps on the PlayBook?
    Will the apps go into the RIM AppStore (or whatever they call the store on Blackberry?)?

    cheers,

    pk