You can bundle the runtime with your app to avoid this. Also trying to use a feature that exists only on one platform isn't really cross-platform, that said AIR does support Native Extensions to do exactly that. They aren't hard to write, I was involved in the beta program to help write the first ones.
That's good to know. I suppose my experience with AIR was about a year ago--right when they first came out with support for mobile--which is about two decades in phone years. And it sounds like my research wasn't complete.
Nonetheless, between a heavyweight and power-hungry executable, an expensive editor, and a scripting language and library for which the most complimentary term I have is "quirky", I really don't understand how AIR is considered even a serious contender in the space of cross-platform . . . platforms. Let alone the best.
