“Java is a pain to develop towards-especially GUI apps, has spotty HTML rendering ability, and a non-native look and feel.”

Possibly the only reason would be getting up the RCP learning curve, but I know of nothing that indicates it would be any worse than Apollo. And I have seen some impressive productivity by non-experts compared to development with web technologies.

However, I suspect that Adobe will have a solution for that.

I wouldnt be surprised if Flash 10 had the Apollo runtime built in. Flash 9 has good penetration, so I would be happy with that scenario.

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

Silverlight understanding: BBC has an article here describing the late-May view of Microsoft’s push into browser plugins. They pick up that the big win is in enabling .NET shops to do those Flash-y types of sites they’ve seen, but I think they get it…

Something like a web browser for example can’t put icons in the notification area next to the clock. An Apollo RSS reader could use native notifications to tell the user when new feeds are available.

An even bigger advantage is true cross platform development. Imagine writing a program that can target Windows, Linux, Mac OSX (via Apollo), and the web browser (via Flash). The same code base can run directly in the browser on Flash or on the desktop using Apollo.

Imagine writing an mp3 player - when I’m at work I want to be able to listen to streaming music, but when I’m at home I want to listen to both streaming music and my own collection. It would be a huge security hole if Javascript or Flash in the browser could access the files on my desktop, but a stand alone desktop application running on the Apollo runtime has no such weakness. So the developers of this mp3 player can use the same code and write an mp3 player that works in the browser as well on the desktop with additional functionality like access to the filesystem, and non-rectangular or transparent windows. See http://www.finetune.com.

Pete Lacey: “I would develop Apollo applications if, and only if, my application was deployed inside the firewall and I had a set-in-stone requirement that could not be met by a browser-based app. But, again, that’s just me. YMMV.” For……

Ah … kind of explains why a Zeepe-ish link sent to to Ryan on his ZDNet blog:

http://www.zeepe.com/zeepeinfo/scottgu.asp

fell into such a deep dark hole.

You mean, just like a web browser application?

“(…) and a few easy to understand, Apollo specific commands (…)”

Not quite. Because it will depend on Adobe’s proprietary runtime environment.

Given how Adobe Acrobat Reader morphed from a utility into a bug-laden monster, I’ll stay with web standards, thank you!

And if somebody ask a standalone executable decoupled from the browser, there’s a stable and open source XUL runner, free as in free beer *and* free speech.

How many machines is Apollo installed on now?

L&F is given far too much weight…if it truly mattered, then web apps wouldn’t look vastly different then for ex say Office. Tell me what L&F reminds you of Facebook?

=Ryan
Adobe Evangelist