I've been using AIR for about 3 weeks now. It's quite simply awesome. For anyone who ever wished they could take Flash apps to the next level, this is beyond a shadow of a doubt the greatest development tool ever conceived.

It completely obliterates MDM Zinc, integrating all the native AIR VM libraries in with Flash.

It gives you the ability to create native apps for Windows and Mac OS, with Adobe AIR installer programs,
control over dock and system tray, direct database access, file access, camera & mic control with no permission popup, and loads more.

Furthermore, it gives developers the ability to distribute online via a Flash-based installer that will auto-install the AIR VM (with user permission) if they don't have it!!

I'm totally in love with this product. Anyone else using it?

I'm taking a look at it as well, but I haven't dived in yet. It's not just for Flash, though. It works equally well for HTML and JavaScript. It looks cool, though.

Correct, it has compilers that work for AIR apps built with HTML + ActionScript or Flex + ActionScript

But... IMO, it's most powerful when used with Flash, since it then also takes advantage of the graphics development tools (unless you want to create everything programmatically).

For me, experimenting with AIR is going to wait until there is a Linux runtime

I haven't done anything with AIR from the developer side, but I am using a few programs built with AIR and they are impressive.