Over the past few years, Adobe’s Flash product has been criticized due to its poor mobile device performance, and more specifically where interactive content is involved. People tend to overlook the fact Flash is an excellent and widely used tool for creating some really great stuff. Countless popular games played on the web were created using Flash, and there are many extremely creative and inventive developers doing fantastic things with the platform for desktop computer users.

One team in particular that stands out are the folks who created Machinarium, an extremely highly rated point-and-click adventure game, built in Flash, that proves what a great experience it can provide on machines having the power to run it. The game has been on the web for some time, now, but the Machinarium team wanted to port the game to iOS, where as we all no Flash apps are unwelcome, to say the least, so they decided to use Adobe Air.

Lee Brimelow, an avid promoter of Adobe, says Amanita Design used Adobe Air and Flash Builder 4.5 to publish their game to iOS. Flash Builder 4.5 enables developers who are content with developing in Flash, or who already have a Flash game or app under their belt, to port their apps over to , iOS and BlackBerry tablets.

The process is relatively complicated, but it’s still easier than learning an entirely new programming language and rebuilding the app completely from scratch. Adobe Air converts click actions in the code to tap and multitouch actions, enabling the app to work on the iOS platform. When that part of the process is finished, the app is translated and packaged according to the iOS store guidelines. Interestingly, the game is compatible only with the iPad 2, as it seems the required performance is lacking in the previous iPad model.

It appears Amanita has done an excellent job, considering the universally high ratings the game has gotten, and the compliments they’ve received for how well the game translated from Flash to the iPad. And then there’s the impressive sales record, too, that has propelled Machinarium to top of list at the App Store for paid iPad apps.

It boils down to, though Flash isn’t the best performing platform for mobile devices, it’s still a valuable tool for creating an exciting interactive experience on the Web. And if tools like Adobe Air can aid developers to make those experiences available to iPad and iPhone users without having to resort to starting all over from the beginning, it’s a win for everyone involved — Adobe, developers and iPad users.

(Via: TNW)