JD on EP

I think a lot of misconception comes from the fact that most of these comparisons aren't done by developers. The truth is if you've worked with a variety of tools, you know their strengths and weaknesses, and you're in a fair position to gauge the impact of new players on the field...IF you actually know what you're talking about.

To many articles these days are written by journalists who have never written a line of code in the context of developing a solution, and rely on press releases and PR flacks to point them in the right direction.

I think the reason AIR and Silverlight are compared so often is twofold. 1) They're both brand new technologies that will allow the creation of Rich Internet Applications. 2) People now have the decision to make whether they want their cool connected app on the desktop or in the browser.

In a perfect world, they'd make the desktop vs. browser decision first. Then, if they chose browser, the correct Flash vs. Silverlight vs. HTML/JS could be made. However, people's minds get clouded by new == better, and everyone wants to work on a cutting edge technology. Flash is ten years old, so "Silverlight must be something completely new and cool and different, right?"

In the end, I urge you to continue clearing the noise. It's Silverlight vs. Flash and No-Microsoft-**Cross-Platform**-Runtime-Exists vs. AIR. Maybe no one understands or wants to admit that Adobe is breaking new ground. :)

"Maybe no one understands or wants to admit that Adobe is breaking new ground."

To be fair, the concept of running same code on different platforms was pushed to general public in the form of Java and it doesn't look like they succeeded that much, at least on the Desktop front, exactly the same one that AIR is targeting as well. Is AIR going to be succesfull? I don't know, but the idea of having people to download yet another software before running the app doesn't appeal me; the fact that the runtime can be deployed alog the app (this has yet to be confirmed) still doesn't convince me.

I just had a nightmare of seeing an article titled "Apollo vs Ron Paul", both new and different things.... ;-)

(I hear what ya'll are saying above, but the pervasiveness and continuing nature of the off-key comparisons are leading me to wonder whether it is all due to accidental confusion.)

I completely agree but after reading your insight to the thinking from Adobe I am curious as to what they mean with the line:

9:30pm Giveaways sponsored by Adobe, Microsoft, O'Reilly

It suggests Adobe supports the face off (or comparison in general). Maybe they bought an AIR book (or other based on an Adobe product)....will hand it out and liberally call that Adobe sponsorship :)

[jd sez: I did some quick searches but did not find the creators and their connection to Adobe. Others inside Adobe are doing the followup with the organizers.]

JD, I'm not entirely sure I get where you're coming from with "I used to think such confusion was accidental, but lately I'm wondering whether there's a deliberate campaign to confuse people like this, as a delaying tactic until something actually ships" and "leading me to wonder whether it is all due to accidental confusion".

Are you seriously trying to suggest that MS are deliberately confusing the issue to mask delays in release? To my mind there aren't delays in release as they've not (to my knowledge) announced a definitive release date, the early noise around the product is purely generating interest and hype something which i've no doubt has been influenced by Adobe's successes in doing so (how long have we been getting excited about apollo/AIR?).

Sorry, I just fail to see how an inaccurate comparison of technologies would make people loose site of release dates????

DannyT, we can't say either way; insufficient evidence as to whether it's a formal campaign.

We've seen MS staffers defend AIR/Silverlight comparisons or make "apollo is just another browser" statements online before -- I'll wade through search results to pull links later if needed. This week I was talking with Adobe field staff who had to counter this apples-to-oranges line during some customer visits, with the customer later explaining that they had heard "Apollo vs Silverlight" from prior MS sales reps.

That's just hearsay though. But when combined with the media placements we see in the newspapers, the hypothesis of an intentional campaign must remain in consideration.

"Spreading confusion to delay judgment" is a Sun Tzu approach; more here and here.

how bizarre. it's one thing to have an uninformed line or two in a news article, and quite another to have a whole event based on it.

i wonder what the event's content will be like???

I wonder if MS could be spreading this FUD because, as I mentioned previously, they don't have a cross-platform desktop runtime. Like the old days with IBM, you can't go wrong choosing a Microsoft product because they're so ubiquitous By making potential customers think AIR is a direct competitor to Silverlight, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft were able to swing some uninformed folks away from even looking into the features of AIR.

/end conspiracy theory ;)