Home AIR 2.0 Coming Soon: Multitouch, Audio Recording, Less Memory

AIR 2.0 Coming Soon: Multitouch, Audio Recording, Less Memory

Microblogging clients, media players, news tickers and more built on Adobe’s popular Rich Internet App framework AIR will soon become a lot more powerful and efficient.

Version 2.0 of AIR will hit Adobe Labs later this year and be available for everyone in the first half of 2010, the company said this week. A good list of new features were blogged about by Adobe’s Christian Cantrell yesterday and below are a few of our favorites.

AIR has

a whole lot of potential

but a number of shortcomings have mitigated the impact it’s made to date, especially the fact that AIR apps tend to be memory hogs. To see what kinds of apps are being built in AIR, check out the now mothballed but still useful 3rd party site

RefreshingApps

or the official

Adobe AIR showcase

.

Here’s what we can look forward to for AIR 2.0.

Multitouch and Gestures

Mac users with multitouch hardware can already perform multitouch actions in AIR apps today, but this feature will be available for Windows users in the next version of AIR. Both Windows 7 and Mac users will get new support for gestures like press and tap, pan, zoom, swipe and rotate.

Think the design-savvy developers of the AIR world can come up with some awesome things to do with these new gestures? We suspect they will.

Local Audio Encoding

“Access audio data directly from the microphone,” Cantrell writes, “You used to have to send the data to a server and access it from there, but now you can do it entirely on the client.” With this increase in efficiency, we expect to see more AIR apps utilize audio. An AIR podcast recording app? That’s an obvious idea, we’ll see what else people come up with.

Improved Memory Use

AIR apps are memory expensive, that’s probably the single biggest complaint about them. Cantrell says that AIR 2.0 will have lower CPU utilization when idle and lower memory consumption in general. That’s great news. If Adobe can really pull this off and make dramatic cuts to AIR’s memory requirement then AIR apps are going to see a big increase in adoption.

The New York Times for example, one of the most new-media capable old-school institutions in the US, recently asked its staff to stop using the AIR app Tweetdeck because it’s such a memory hog. That’s probably one of the reasons why Times staff appears to be posting to Twitter less these days.

AIR apps can offer a compelling user experience outside the browser but across computing platforms. We’ve had high hopes for AIR for a long time. These and other improvements could help AIR deliver on more of that promise.

Hopefully 2.0 won’t be too long in coming.

See Also: 10 Adobe AIR Apps Bloggers Will Love

About ReadWrite’s Editorial Process

The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Get the biggest tech headlines of the day delivered to your inbox

    By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe anytime.

    Tech News

    Explore the latest in tech with our Tech News. We cut through the noise for concise, relevant updates, keeping you informed about the rapidly evolving tech landscape with curated content that separates signal from noise.

    In-Depth Tech Stories

    Explore tech impact in In-Depth Stories. Narrative data journalism offers comprehensive analyses, revealing stories behind data. Understand industry trends for a deeper perspective on tech's intricate relationships with society.

    Expert Reviews

    Empower decisions with Expert Reviews, merging industry expertise and insightful analysis. Delve into tech intricacies, get the best deals, and stay ahead with our trustworthy guide to navigating the ever-changing tech market.