I just listened to this podcast today, and I wanted to point out an important bit of misinformation that was mentioned.

When you were talking about the AIR 2.0 features such as opening files with their default apps, you mentioned that this wasn't allowed before "for security reasons, because Adobe is trying to keep the AIR platform secure."

Adobe definitely is trying to keep the AIR platform secure (for example, we don't want people to be able to hack the encrypted local store). However, that doesn't mean that any feature is excluded from AIR because it is potentially harmful to the end user.

Oliver Goldman, principal engineer for AIR, talks about this in this post:
http://blogs.adobe.com/simplicity/2009/03/why_air_does_not_include_your_favorite_feature.html

In summary, he says we never exclude a feature because it's potentially harmful. The biggest reason we exclude a feature is because of time -- we just don't have time to do everything we'd like to do, and make sure we're doing it the best way.

Paul
Adobe AIR team

@Paul - thank you for the clarification.

I've been wrong about it since AIR 1.0.

I will make sure to mention it in the next podcast.

While re-reading my comment, I began to regret my choice of words a bit. It probably sounds overly harsh for me to describe the minor mistake as "an important bit of misinformation." Obviously you weren't trying to deceive anyone, and while this is an important point for (at least some of) the AIR team, it may or may not be important to everyone who listens to the podcast =)

It probably would have been more accurate for me to describe it as "a common misconception" instead.

Anyway, I enjoy the podcast -- please keep it up!