The whole reason for having SWFs is so that you can use the graphics, usually more than once. If you are writing a game, for example, and you have a SWF to be a enemy character graphic, you are most likely going to have more than one of that character in a level, and it is useless if it breaks your app to do something so basic. There are really countless situations where you would want to use a SWF graphic more than once, just like you would use a PNG or JPG more than once.
It now says
Error #3764: Reloading a SWF is not supported on this operating system.
whenever you try to use a SWF more than once on iOS.
The release notes say that this foundational, basic functionality of AIR was dropped because there 'was a problem with it'. What is this 'problem' and why is it worth dropping such a core and basic functionality of the platform? It is strange that the notes simply say this is dropped, but don't say what solution you are supposed to use instead, or give any real explanation as to why it was dropped or if it was ever coming back.
Is this permanently dropped or just for the beta?
What is the 'problem' that is worth dropping it for?
What is the solution to use graphics more than once in AIR?
The release notes talk about 'undefined' behavior. What does it mean if the behavior of something is 'undefined'?
Packing all of your graphics as classes within the root IPA/SWF object is not a solution because it obviously won't work for downloadable graphics and it would make a massive SWF if you have a web-based version of your project, making it take an unbearable amount of time to download to a user's browser.
This secondary ActionScript SWF 'feature' is something that should be an option people can enable if they want with a check box or command line option. Doing things that break other things isn't a fix or a feature. To randomly drop such a basic and foundational functionality is insane.
The secondard ActionScript SWF thingy hasn't even really changed anything anyways, the secondary ActionScript would still have to be there at compile time, so you might as well put all your code into the main SWF anyways, it is just some smoke and mirrors to make it look like dynamic loading of ActionScript. Any truely external ActionScript will still not work. You still have to approach your project differently if you want it to work on iOS.