FlashBuilder 4.5 and iOS vs. Android

Tuesday, June 07 2011 -

One of the new features in Flashbuilder 4.5 is that it can publish to Android, iOS and Blackberry. We are still waiting on the iOS update to build Flex iOS projects, however you can build a strictly AS3 project and publish to iOS. That all sounds great, until you actually try and do it.

The steps necessary for me to publish to my Iconia tablet were 2 – Configure the IDE and Install the USB driver. From that point on I can publish to my tablet and I can debug on it.

To publish to the iOS based tablet is a whole lot of steps most of which are not consumer friendly and frankly have so far have resulted in us NOT being able to publish, debug or even run on an iOS device.

It would be easy to blame Flashbuilder/Adobe for this, but the reality is the issues we are having are strictly with Apple. Getting a certificate onto the device is a nightmare. Their notifications about “Pending Certificate Request” are obnoxious and buggy. The emails come in with links to requests that are not visible on the site so that my teammate and I played certificate tag. It just shouldn’t be that difficult.

I rate the experience a MEH!