REDEMPTION MEDIA BLOG

An Air-tight Solution

In October, Dave (our MD) was invited to chair a seminar on ‘The future of devices’ at the Leeds Digital Conference. Yes, we are a Sheffield-based company but Dave’s considerable expertise in the area of mobile and devices made him the ideal choice for this topic and so the organisers chose to keep quiet about the minor fact of our location.

The turnout was excellent and Dave chaired a panel of experts from various agencies including the BBC.

So what was the conclusion of the seminar? What does the future hold for mobiles, tablets, smart TVs and the ever-increasing number of devices finding their way into our everyday lives?

Well, the general prediction by the audience and panel was that we can’t make any predictions about the future of devices.

In other words, who knows?

And why were so few of the ‘experts’ willing to have a stab at guessing the direction of travel for devices over the next few years? The main reasons stated time and time again were problems associated with ‘fragmentation’. Fragmentation refers to the ridiculously huge and ever increasing number of different devices and operating systems that are currently on the market. Take the Android operating system for example; there are currently 4000 different Android devices in circulations, each with their own screen sizes, operating systems, manufacturers, versions etc.

What is a developer to do?

How can an app be built for so many devices and work seamlessly on each one? And the number of variations of each device is only increasing.

How depressing. But wait a second…

At Redemption Media we have a secret weapon. Only it’s so cool we don’t really want to keep it a secret.

So…you promise you won’t tell….it’s….wait for it…..Adobe Air.

Adobe Air is an awesome development platform that allows us to develop our apps once, and then target the same code at all the different operating
systems. We don’t develop separately for iOS, Android, Windows etc. – we just do the job once and let Adobe Air do the rest.

Simples!

This approach results in vastly superior apps at significantly lower cost to our clients.

Adobe Air offers more advantages than just a shorter development time; the platform also provides functionality that is simply not available using competing products (such as Phone Gap). Adobe Air is not a second-best to native coding; rather it can result in faster, superior apps.

So why don’t all app developers use Adobe Air? Well firstly, some coders are put off by Adobe’s association with Flash, which famously is not compatible with Apple devices. However, this is not true for Adobe Air, which has been purposefully developed to work on all operating systems.

Secondly, developers need to possess a high level of skill and expertise to use Adobe Air effectively. At Redemption Media, our team of developers has
years of ActionScript experience and so we’re able to use this platform with outstanding results.

Adobe Air is being refined and updated all the time. We have been chosen by Adobe to be part of their pre-release team, meaning we get access to new software ahead of our competitors and are able to trial the updates and give feedback to Adobe. To see some of the incredible power and potential of the
Adobe platform, take a look at this game developed using Air:

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ruby-blast-free/id515361019?mt=8
FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/appcenter/rubyblast

We think the future of devices is bright and full of exciting apps. But that’s because we have a secret weapon….If you want to find out more about Redemption Media, take a look at our portfolio and give us a call on 0114 2765614.