No it does not work like that. To be able to publish on iOS, there Adobe AIR compile to native binary. On Android, Windows, and macOS (also Linux) it does not

No it does not work like that. To be able to publish on iOS, there Adobe AIR compile to native binary. On Android, Windows, and macOS (also Linux) it does not to do that (eg. it is fast enough), so instead you have the choice to publish an app that need the AIR runtime, OR to publish a captive runtime (it bundle inside the app). In general, most dev use captive runtime and so you don't need the AIR runtime installed first. Now, keeping a runtime bundled vs compiling to native have numerous advantages, for ex you can make part of your app dynamically updatable without re-installing the whole app. Technically Adobe have the tech in the AIR SDK to compile to any native target, they just use it for iOS.