The original cross-compile from AIR may have had its own optimization issues. But oh, the irony if the speed at which Adobe has had to port this to Objective-C has resulted in a more sluggish app!

Fortunately, it looks like the native app is actually an improvement. Look at the video from February: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/the-wired-ipad-app-a-... The paging, zooming, and scrolling really does look smoother to me.