JD on EP

Agree.

Possibilities are endless but I think 2 are mostly reliable (if not :-)

1. WPF, WPF/E and new ideas they are working on will get something bigger which they will eventually announce in the coming months.

2. At the moment they don’t have anything so much excited and if so, at least they don’t try to trash-talk against new stuff.

Or a combination of both.

Or totally different. Who knows?

Well, if someone knows, let him speaks the truth :-)

[jd sez: Who are you?]

Uhm.... maybe Apollo WILL change the way desktop apps are made, eventually.... I see the Apollo fans talking about it like it is already in everybody machine, delivered and complete. Everything is only a propmise with a lot of empty holes (like the "ANY desktop" thing, while only Mac and Windows will be implemented first and the rest will EVENTUALLY come... a promise within a promise). Apollo is buggy, incomplete and still very much undefined. Try to read some of the posts that developers are putting on the Labs forums after the first week of excitement and see how many problems they are facing (of course the reply is "this i an alpha"... there is always the right answer from Adobe).
Apollo is a very bold claim at the moment and nothing more, if I was Microsdoft or any other company I would not be worried at all, as I was not worried about Central and a lot of other "bold claims" in the past from Macromedia/Adobe.

[jd sez: Who are you?]

>[jd sez: Who are you?]
I'm a desktop and web application developer and I'm not married to any particular company. My job is to deliver solutions that actually works and are reliable and can scale without problems, my customers (generally medium/large enteprises) don't buy hype nor religious statements of faith in one particular technology or another.
Beside writing this blog, do you have a real job or you just get paid to never criticize your company products and actually blast the ones that do?

[jd sez: As noted previously, the only Google footprint for "Endry Deloir" is on my weblogs, recently, all on similar topics. That's odd, too.]

Why should they comment?

[jd sez: I didn't say they should, or shouldn't, only that they haven't. That's odd.]

Apollo is actually rather difficult to understand from a user benefits perspective, and all by itself it has nothing but potential.

Whether it becomes truly useful and engaging is dependent on what developers do with it. IMO, Macromedia has always had a history of favoring glossy lick-ability while glancing over usability and usefulness in terms the user experience "built into" the tools.

So the jury is still out over what impact Apollo is going to have. Surely that question is much bigger then Adobe, and that's a good thing.

>[jd sez: As noted previously, the only Google footprint for "Endry Deloir" is on my weblogs, recently, all on similar topics. That's odd, too.]

So what? Will this add or detract anything to what I'm saying? I'm not famous like you, that's all. Call me a "rural developer" if you like, but I spend more time actually developing rather than promoting one technology rather than another one, whether is MS or Adobe.

i wonder if "Endry Deloir" is an anagram for something? :)

Wasn't the topic about Apollo and MS not taking care of it (like many other people/companies) or was who I am?
I see the fans have no arguments this morning.....

Kudos JD for diligently moderating the comments on your blog. Maybe Endry - above - is like he says, "a rural developer" or maybe he's a Microsoft plant. But you have alerted all readers that this guy doesn't come with any credentials such as a personal blog, news articles, nada. More than likely he's just a troller who made his first comment but you never know.

polyGeek... are your credentials any better? [jd sez: extraneous; ad-hominem] You blog is full of news copied from somewhere else or very irrelevant (discussing when the name Apollo leaked is exciting like seeing Roseanne Barr in bikini)

Why you keep concentrating on me rather than what I said? Why not saying "I don't think you're right because:..." and add your arguments? If the only thing you can do is trying to raise the "he's a tecnology terrorist" kind of thing, it means you really have nothing to say.
What about if someone says that evertyhing that JD write is irrelevant bacause he works for the same company that actually produce the tools/technologies?

P.S. By the way the JS in your blog give an errors (Out of memory at line 126) but maybe Apollo will solve your problems

I'm not sure why Microsoft is not bloggin on Apollo more but it could be signs of refreshing change. Perhaps they're sticking to their knitting (so to speak) rather than getting into he says/she says discussions of why Apollo is weak or why what they have is better. Nothing is better than staying quiet until you actually have something substantive to say! Of course, that's contrary to the technology industry in general and bloggin in particular...

@Endry, I'm sorry that you mistook my comments for a personal attack. I was simply speaking to the fact that it is difficult in today's media to know who to trust. Are you just a guy speaking his opinion or a corporate plant out to advance an opinion for pay? Which is what JD was pointing out himself to his readers which I applaud.

As a for instance, who am I? 'polyGeek' comments on many of the blogs in the Adobe community and beyond. I have my own blog full of my own crap and I can be contacted. It doesn't mean that I can get my passport stamped for the land of objective, unbiased, truthfulness but it's something.

When a stranger enters a community and has unfavorable things to say readers will be justly weary.

BTW, the "Apollo name leaked" was an April fools joke and please point out to me where I have copied information from somewhere else. I will remove it.

@polyGeek, I can be contacted too, I have entered my e-mail address at every post I put here, the fact that it is not shown do not belong to a choice of mine. [jd sez: That's true, there's a Hotmail address with an abbreviation of the username, and an IP address which consistently resolves to Monaco. But the argument is a bit of a red herring too, because none of us reading his words can see who owns them. The whole thing's odd.]

I know the Apollo name was a joke, but what I was really commenting was the fact that in any blogs that talks about any Adobe product you only see fantastic comments and pumped up hype on things that barely exsist. I don't see any objectivity in judging things which are barely defined like Apollo, nobody saying "Yes, nice concept, but let's see", everything is ok, no problems, like nobody has been able to develop desktop applications before. Apollo will have its niche, but will never change the way real desktop applications are being developed.... until I will see Photoshop or Flash itself being developed using Apollo.

I remenber the same tone and passion in these discussions around 20 years ago, when the choice was between ZX Spectrum and Commdore 64, since then I grow up and actually take the tools and technology that will do in one particular scenario, sometimes it is Adobe sometimes it is something else with no faith or religious choice whatsoever. But apparently I'm in good company with only a few

I wouldn't make too big of a deal out of Apollo yet. But that's not really the interesting thing here. What is the absolute lack of chatter on the MS blogs. If that's the case you have to wonder if they're barred from talking about it right now.

Kinda makes Barnes appear a little obsessed ;-) I kid - he actually deserves extra credit for talking about it. Acknowledging that it means *something*.

I think you're touching on something here JD that I've sensed but not been able to really find words for until now. I tend to get the vibe that, (for whatever reasons), we've kind of crossed some point where Adobe and Microsoft folk are no longer able to "admire" one another's technologies / innovations. I find that unfortunate.

As a developer I feel pretty lucky to have the choices in tech that is becoming available to me. I can't help but feel though that the price is having to read between the lines in places I didn't have to in the past.

I dunno, it's Friday.

Cheers,
A.

JD, I think its an interesting observations that Microsoft is generally very quiet about Apollo -- can't say I'm very surprised though.

Nice to see you've got someone from Monaco commenting, it sure is a great place to live if you've got the money. Its just a tad bit out of my price range for the moment I'm afraid ;) Great perks if your one of its roughly 40,000 population though like zero income tax etc.

Think its more a case of waiting when to expect a marketing hype counter strike from Microsoft than hoping for them to open up some debate on the future of bridging the web and the desktop.

Its a bit of a shame but doesn't seem to be the modus operandi over in Redmond to be open when it comes to possible competition.

[jd sez: That's true, there's a Hotmail address with an abbreviation of the username, and an IP address which consistently resolves to Monaco. But the argument is a bit of a red herring too, because none of us reading his words can see who owns them. The whole thing's odd.]

Well, Deloir is a French surname while Endry is an irish derived name, actually posting from Singapore thru my company network based in Monaco.

Does this add/remove anything to what I have said?

I saw other people which have public face and reputation being ridiculed here and other blogs because they don't think Apollo is all that great, so question here is not who is saying what but really what is being said negatively. If I was another of the Apollo fan nobody will have questioned my identity, location and reliability, even if my nickname was Bin Laden.

Andrew Lucking (real guy! :) wrote: "I tend to get the vibe that, (for whatever reasons), we've kind of crossed some point where Adobe and Microsoft folk are no longer able to "admire" one another's technologies / innovations. I find that unfortunate."

My own feelings have changed very recently, true. That smack talk discussion of last month is still changing things for me.

I still see Microsoft as vital part of our total computing ecology, but all their continuing martial metaphors signal a predatory, parasitical part of that ecology, which sees its goal as wiping out other parts. There are good people working there, but the corporate culture is based on zero-sum beliefs. All of us have to engage with Microsoft, but I don't trust them as much these days. I'll give them another chance after their next major exec shuffle, though... it's possible for a corporate culture to evolve.

(btw, Andrew, I'm still hoping Adobe Tech Support will evolve... I still haven't gotten them to commit on how IE7 broke some Authorware projects, and what people can do to address it. I'm not happy with the way we handled this, and I feel the need to apologize for how we failed here.)

jd/adobe

Firstly,

JD you are freaking paranoid and are pretty damn good and pitching the "propergander" around Microsoft (Who is this person, are they a secret plant from Microsoft to discredit my efforts).

If the answer can't be found or explained it has to be Microsoft right? I also note that when folks disagree with you or other Adobe staffers that you seem to attack them or take an aggressive posture? may want work on that as others outside of the Microsoft bubble have noted it.

Secondly,

On one hand Adobe "attacks" folks like myself and others that we should focus on our own products and leave Apollo alone. Then, you now criticise us for not talking about Apollo? I mean WTF? can we get a clear and concise message from Adobe on this product or not? as Adobe have failed to contain the message up until now on Apollo and now you're sending the same mixed signals on how Microsoft should act?

Is there anything about this product that is on-message (have you contacted the Marketing Department(s) about this product yet or is it going to be played out in Blogsphere?)

Thirdly,

No conspiracy theory here. We've looked at what we think Apollo has in terms of pro's and con's. We respect the technology enough to understand it's potential, but at this point it's pretty much "yet another browser" (that's not saying that's all it can do by any stretch, but just the way its being used at present). When it does something more exciting, you'll probably invoke more comments from Microsoft staffers? at the moment it's like "So it's 3 steps behind Multidmedia Zinc? so what? you want a badge for it now?"

Do more on it and you'll gain more commentry but sorry to say the buzz about the Alpha's moved on... looking forward to the beta though! :)

(TIP: Less rushing product out each qtr to stimulate stock price and more focus on quality).

-
Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft.

Sorry, spullin mistake:
propergander = propaganda

p.s
Is this a slow news cycle week for Adobe?

[jd sez: I don't know, "proper gander" gives me all these nice Carl Barks thoughts, somehow.... ]

JD, I have to say I think Endry is making valid points regarding your concern over his identity. I've never seen a blog owner say "who are you?" to a commenter for seemingly no reason. And then you call him out for "ad-hominem" when he applies your own tactic to another commenter? Seriously?

I'm a big fan of Adobe and make my living as a Flash/Flex developer, but I'm very confused by your approach here. So MS is quiet, my guess is its because they have nothing to counter with at the moment. They probably never will. Cross-platform is counter-productive for them. Why would they draw attention to a product that fills a gap in their technology stack?

That being said, your comments/edits on this post smack of arrogance and a disproportionate bias, and even though I'm a nobody, I would urge you to reconsider your tone here.

[jd sez: Sorry, I don't agree... if someone wants to speak to me, and gain my attention, then in return I'd like to know who they are, and what their biases might be. Particularly when their speech evades the main subject of a discussion, and seeks to divert it elsewhere, and does so consistently. "Own your words", that's simply a longterm net maxim, and is not unreasonable to request.]

Sorry, but I'm going to have to call BS on this one. You asked both dimitar71 and Endry "who are you?", but neither of them were evading the subject of the discussion. They were discussing Apollo, which is obviously a big component of this discussion. At least it was initially. Endry's only offense was that he was being critical of Apollo/Adobe/MM. polyGeek added nothing whatsoever to the discussion except for a pat on your back and a paranoid comment/jab at Endry, yet he received no inquisition into his identity or credentials.

Sorry to be repetitive, but how can you demand that people "own their words" and criticize others for ad-hominem arguments in the same breath? Shouldn't you be concerned with the validity of their argument/complaint/theory, rather than whether or not they have a blog that discloses their identity? I know plenty of brilliant people who have no desire to publicly blog. That doesn't lessen my respect for their opinions.

[jd sez: If you read the above, and prior posts here, you'll see there's a particular pattern of pseudonymous response, coupled with off-topic attacking digression, which _could_ suggest manipulation. Getting rid of that possibility is good. It's not "BS" to recognize this. ]

THIS is why I don't go out on a Friday night. Who would want to miss this? :)

Scott - Although I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment of Apollo...saying what you did may not be the brightest thing in the world. Just hours ago I blogged on how it was refreshing that Microsoft wasn't blabbing about Apollo...why bother?

My unsolicited advice? Next time think twice before you speak.

JD, it's your blog so I suppose you can do what you want. I think your (unstated by firmly implied) policy is that you both identify yourself and you have a "google footprint". In all sincerity why don't you impose a subscription model where those of us who want to post comments must register with you first. Sound silly? Well, I don't know how can have it both ways: either you allow people to post anonymously (and, by the way, let their comments stick without attack) or you limit who can and can't post.

The one commenter seems to have identified themselves--now what?

Regarding the silence... hmm. Interesting. I can't imagine there's a concerted effort to not say anything... maybe. Keep in mind, if MS when into attack mode to diss Apollo, you know what you'd (rightfully) say? It's just an alpha.

Apollo looks great and I'm happy there's so much momentum behind it.

Me:

Buying Adobe stock and winning.

You:

Holding onto that MS stock and eating baked beans.

Hi Phillip, I don't require identity here anymore, but I still use its presence (as well as its consistent absence) to help evaluate what I read.

jd

The verbal arms race between MS and Adobe platforms inspired this purely hypothetical question:

If Microsoft came to Adobe on Monday, and suggested collborating on them supporting Apollo (e.g. having SWF/Apollo output from their Expression tools), would Adobe do it?

[jd sez: I'm not able to answer that myself, German... would depend on what they needed. Microsoft still remains a vital part of the overall computing ecology, so cooperation would naturally continue. In this case, I'm not sure what type of help they might need to produce SWF or Ajax, so it's hard for me to answer that one.]

@notaprguy: It was ligh hearted comment and when jd or ted specifically tailor a blog post with my name in it, one has to wonder if it's got undercurrent of tactic within or is it about the context of the discussion. If i was paranoid i could argue this is one of many attempts to date from Adobe staffers trying to discredit my efforts within the MSFT brand etc. Like I get hassled by them from all angles (last week i was told there's a bet going on, on how long I would last at Microsoft, FUD rants thrown at my way, blog posts pushing the issues aside, the ones that matter in way of personal attacks. Plugs being pulled out of projectors at conferences from Adobe staffers, the works. Point is, its annoying them and as a result, they are listening - whether they like what I say or not.

Sad part about all of this is that I'm not told by Adobe once that i'm wrong? what's that say?

-

@German: I doubt they'd accept, much like they didn't with "WebORB" folks :( stupid move if you ask me.

--
Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft - Adobe is my speciality hehe.

Wow, who knew that complimenting JD on a job well done would lead to such a lively discussion.

Getting back on topic:
I have no contact what-so-ever with the WPF/e group at Microsoft. That being said I'd wager that a manager called a meeting and and said, "Don't nobody say nothin 'bout Apollo until we go public with the Thor project. We don't want to bother chipping away, we'll just come out with a sledge hammer and make some big noise.

It's that simple.

Definition of propaganda:
information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

On the subject of JD spreading propaganda: what the frak do you think I read this blog for? I read it to get news about Adobe and web technology in general - that's propaganda. Give me more.

It's the BS in the propaganda to watch out for. It's the readers responsibility to detect BS when they read it. But it's not much fun to be constantly on the alert. I want to read something that I can believe. Over time I've grown familiar with JD and I've never detected BS so I've dialed down my filters a bit when reading here. I'm not saying my BS-filter is turned off, just turned down.

When you're reading the comments you're reading someone else's propaganda. JD has his BS-filter turned on high and so should you when reading comments. He did us the favor of reminding us. He didn't come out and say, "this guy is lying". He was just pointing out that maybe there was something to be weary of here. 'Nuff said.

However, regarding Microsoft: I expect that they are going to be misleading. I have personally read or scene interviews with MS employees where they blatantly misrepresented information. It has gotten to the point that I don't read information from Microsoft to get the news. I read it because it's good practice to read things that are likely to be misleading or just plane lies. That way you won't be easily fooled at other times.

I'm not sure if microsoft has any big announcements for the apollo space. I'm thinking that the dearth of discussion on the ms blogs are due to the company not quite sure how to go about developing an answer to apollo. Blend and wpf/e are interesting and pretty cool from what i have played with, but at the same time the authoring environment is tied to vista/xp. So even though they are taking into account the need for desktop/internet integration it still *feels* like they are looking for a way to tie it to their os and own the developers and consumers. I understand that from a business stance but I think they have a hard time developing solutions that don't lock back to the os. Feels a little like the LMS providers who usually offer an authoring tool to their customers-who mistakenly think that everything it produces will be capable of running on any LMS they might switch to at a later date. Often the content ends up having deep hooks to the specifc LMS and needs costly rework if the move to another product even when they support the same standards-SCORM or AICC.

Out of curiosity, should we expect Adobe to be commenting on the various projects coming out of MS? Are you saying that "normally MS goes wild commenting on our stuff, and this time they're silent"? Or, are you saying "we always comment on each other's products, so why are they quiet this time?". If it's the second option, then I'd just wonder why I don't hear Adobe commenting on the various MS products that arrive. Like, for instance, I don't recall a competitive breakdown of
how FMS compares to MS's solutions. I'd actually want some of that, but I guess I also fear too much would be distracting.

" Should we expect Adobe to be commenting on the various projects coming out of MS?"

I suspect there isn't a single answer... would depend on the person, would depend on the project.

Me, I don't have much interest OS-restricted stuff like WPF, but have tried to pull together info about the upcoming MS browser plug-in for years now:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mtadmin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=28&search=sparkle

Most of us -- if we see something new in an area in which we're working -- we usually try to learn more, try to understand it. That's why, when the conversational patterns of those who work in and talk about network-aware applications didn't follow the same trends as found among their customers, the discrepancy caught my eye. Unusual... not substantive in itself, as Ethan's comment notes... just unusual.

jd/adobe

JD -- It seems fair to be skeptical, however not paranoid. After all, the internet is "only a reflection of the world".

Regarding the original topic of this post, haven't you seen/heard Bill Gates' words about blogging -- he said,
[paraphrase] "...in the future, blogs will do the advertising...they will sell our products..."

Regardless of which company he works for, what he said is true. It's blogs like this one that support its own products, sell its own brand, and attack the others...its practically like a political race where candidates push for more votes, then votes turn into dollars. Why else would companies take blogging so seriously? Why would they pay someone a full-time salary to blog all day? Wow. The internet really has opened up new job markets. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm...

Marshall

Hi all, I'm a MS blogger and User Experience Evangelist.

Why haven't I mentioned Apollo since December (and even then hardly at all)? Because I've been too busy to get my hands on it and play with it! Which is really annoying. Don't want to shoot my mouth off and make an idiot of myself.

Has anyone told me not to blog about Apollo? Nope.

Cheers, Shane

SIGH: 'but at this point it's pretty much "yet another browser"' - I'm frankly getting really tired of Mr Barnes' BS. This is a hot button that Scott is trying hard to push at the moment, he has admitted in person to me that he knows that it's not a browser - it is just one of the lines that Microsoft's Grand Master FUD is spinning right now. The new one that he's warming up is that since Mac users have Parrallels and are using Windows as necessary the whole XPlatform thing is a non-issue - watch out for a lot more of this spin...

"dimitar71" (?) suggests Microsoft is readying announcements of their own, and (presumably) has locked down bloggers until then."

Silverlight maybe.
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/default_01.aspx

[jd sez: They've announced another name.]

hehe damn it Muller, you're onto me ;) (are you cutting and pasting these to all blogs I interact with? as like that's the second time you've posted that message? should i be worried about net stalking?)

You do always though come to Adobe's aid a little to much and some would say that you're shooting for that Job @ Adobe in the consultancy area that you were also talking about :) (full disclosure and all) [jd sez: This is just pathetic.]

Scott.