JD on EP

Hey John,

One of the highlights of the visit to San Fran for me was finally getting to meet you in person. Keep up the great blogging! I love San Fran, I would love to return there for another visit soon.

Cando for the amiga was ahead anything on pcs or macs for 2-3 years. incredible development environment for an incredible platform which commodore destroyed. sniff sniff... anyways, go apollo!!!

Unfortunately I was too busy with client projects to attend Apollo Camp, so I'm not privy to the kind of godsmack moments that might have occurred there.

So, from my possibly ignorant perspective, I just don't get Apollo. Is Adobe trying to take the content out of the browser? It reminds me a lot of Peter Small's crazy ideas about shifting content from the web to Shockwaves back in the Director 7-8 days. (yes, I'm the same Brett Walker from the DIRECT-L heyday)

Is the populace really hungry for desktop internet applications? Didn't we try that in Web 1.0 when "push" was the big buzzword? Granted, the stuff that Apollo can do is much more sophisticated, but do I really want to keep track of my eBay auctions by installing a system tray app? It just seems like a solution in search of a problem.

Please enlighten me; I do *want* to discover that Apollo is going cause some paradigm shift in internet content, I'm just not seeing the case for it yet.

I totally agree that the question being begged is whether there's a demand for desktop apps or not. I think there's some killer stuff in Apollo and it will likely eliminate my usage of various swf-to-exe tools (depending on whether it can deliver the needs of my clients). But this is to say, Apollo will kill my usage when I need to deliver a desktop app. It happens and, maybe, there's a trend towards the desktop (in fact, I think it's still all web for everything but I could be hanging around the wrong clients).

I do think one valid attraction is that people who have skills in certain web technologies (javascript, flash, html) will find the transition to Apollo easy. But, again, are these people needing to deliver to the desktop?

I can also see that desktop apps (in general) certainly arise when clients want to do some crazy thing that you just can't do in a browser. Maybe apollo will add some credibility to it.

Apollo also has the very nice feature of a seamless install via Flash (though, I can't say I've seen this yet--but if it's like Central or Breeze, it's pretty slick).

So, my points:
--desktop apps are not exactly hot all of a sudden.
--Apollo lets people transfer their skills (provided there is a demand for a desktop app).
--There's nothing like a desktop app... but that's not new.
--Installing might be slightly nicer.

Finally, Director 4 was a big deal. Apollo is great because it looks well thought out and well executed. However, if you're in the business of predicting the future I wouldn't bet the farm that you'll see some repeat of the glory days of Director. I think what Apollo does more than anything is firmly establish that Flash/Flex are "traditional" web technologies.

Desktop admin controls are perfect fodder just as they are with a commercial wrapper now but with the added capabilities Apollo brings to the table. Completely pack and go admin without need of a server side to write allows us to never have to place an admin frontend in the webspace (if we choose). Since all of the wrappers have this quirk or that I have no problem with Adobe encompassing both under one roof since we will most likely end up with a better overall package than the third party wrappers can provide not to mention their dev teams dwarf the third parties in sheer size and numbers.

I see a win- win by end of 07 at final :)

Phillip,

What you laid out pretty much resonates with my take on things, but again, I may be missing the secret sauce that will make me exclaim, "I need to start developing Apollo stuff ASAP!"

One thing I'd add is that, from a strategic point-of-view, it seems very obvious that Adobe has their sights set directly at Microsoft's .NET. With Flex and now Apollo, those intentions seem immediately transparent. I don't think they'll get much traction in the firmly entrenched of the .NET world, although I know at least one .NET developer who is seriously considering at least *learning* Flex. However, I do think the Flex/Apollo alliance will at least, with the help of a healthy influx of Java developers, create a formidable alternative to .NET.

My takeaway from Apollo Camp was that Apollo is really an extension to Flex, and not a separate product. This means that you can use Flex to build browser-based apps and desktop apps from the same codebase. Add to that the ability to encapsulate and modify DHTML, and suddenly Flex has become a very compelling way to create internet applications of all sorts. Apollo gives Flex a whole lot more flexibility.

Hi guys,
I have a slightly different take on this. I think Apollow will be a success because it bridges three very powerful technologies: HTML, Flash and eventually PDFs (according to earlier Adobe posts, but not part of the beta from what I gather).

It's not so much about what these technologies offer, but rather what you'll gain from being able to combine them seamlessly. My best examples thus far are that now I'll finally be able to have that WYSIWYG editor in my Flash app, a system that easily pushes out new versions to all users, almost a one click conversion of AJAX Apps to Desktop Apps (with enhanced features) and it is all just a button click to install for the end user. I'm sure there are plenty more uses that I have not thought about yet. Converting old apps is not too interesting, but thinking up new ways to utilize this is the key to success...

What is maybe the most exciting about Apollo is the possibilities it opens up, not how it compares to other tech. It is of course an extension of Flex, but it's certainly is an extension of capabilities of an already rather creative crowd of developers?

J