At this point Playbook software development seems to be limited to Flash/Flex/AIR (with maybe a few proprietary extensions) and HTML5/Javascript.
Performance of Flash/AIR on current generation Android and iOS devices varies from kind of disappointing (Android) to really disappointing (iOS). But the demos of Playbook have been very impressive. (The entire Playbook UI is done in Flash/AIR.) This impressive performance is apparently due to the QNX realtime OS kernel and a highly optimized Flash AIR runtime. QNX is very fast at multitasking context switches (much faster than the current iOS/Darwin kernel for example). And Playbook has a dual core ARM CPU. So effectively the Playbook should be able to take unoptimized non-thread-safe software (like the Flash AIR runtime) and make it run really fast.
Their HTML5/Javascript implementation running on QNX and a dual core CPU should be screaming fast for the same reasons. (It's a bit early to handicap, but I expect Javascript performance several times faster than an iPad 1.)
For audio AIR has a decent sound library. It is possible to do audio applications with Flash/AIR. As for HTML5 audio, I would not expect support for that yet.
A major missing piece of the puzzle at this point is a C/C++-based development environment needed for the high-performance libraries for specialized applications like games, music and audio. AFAIK there is no C/C++API for the Playbook as yet.
Of course, this is all speculative. Almost no one outside of RIM has had their hands on a Playbook. And the proof is in the pudding.
2 comments:
At this point Playbook software development seems to be limited to Flash/Flex/AIR (with maybe a few proprietary extensions) and HTML5/Javascript.
Performance of Flash/AIR on current generation Android and iOS devices varies from kind of disappointing (Android) to really disappointing (iOS). But the demos of Playbook have been very impressive. (The entire Playbook UI is done in Flash/AIR.) This impressive performance is apparently due to the QNX realtime OS kernel and a highly optimized Flash AIR runtime. QNX is very fast at multitasking context switches (much faster than the current iOS/Darwin kernel for example). And Playbook has a dual core ARM CPU. So effectively the Playbook should be able to take unoptimized non-thread-safe software (like the Flash AIR runtime) and make it run really fast.
Their HTML5/Javascript implementation running on QNX and a dual core CPU should be screaming fast for the same reasons. (It's a bit early to handicap, but I expect Javascript performance several times faster than an iPad 1.)
For audio AIR has a decent sound library. It is possible to do audio applications with Flash/AIR. As for HTML5 audio, I would not expect support for that yet.
A major missing piece of the puzzle at this point is a C/C++-based development environment needed for the high-performance libraries for specialized applications like games, music and audio. AFAIK there is no C/C++API for the Playbook as yet.
Of course, this is all speculative. Almost no one outside of RIM has had their hands on a Playbook. And the proof is in the pudding.
@richard
"Performance of Flash/AIR on current generation Android and iOS devices varies from kind of disappointing (Android) to really disappointing (iOS)"
I guess that's understandable, knowing Apple's relationship with Adobe ..
It would've been much better if Apple wouldn't have shown the door to Adobe and shut them out of their system.
.. even the Wii has a Flash player.
Post a Comment