I’m a flash developer.
Though I’ve always taken the claims that 98% of internet enabled desktops have the Flash plug-in. I’ve seen this marketing babble get run a few times now in regards to Apollo vs. Silverlight and in general when talking about the ubiquity of the Flash family of products (Flash, Flash Lite, Flex and now Apollo).
Regarding Apollo, how does “98%” of the internet having Flash installed make any difference to the (at this point in time) 0% of the general public that have the Apollo runtime installed… I just don’t see the connection.
What is interesting me about Apollo is not so much the ability to create something for the web (ie. Flex) and be able to deploy it to the desktop (at least on Mac and Windows XP and Vista) but how Adobe intend on getting the install base of Apollo up to make it a viable solution to recommend to customers and clients. Time will tell what strategy they have, but considering Vista doesn’t come with Flash (or the Apollo runtime for that matter) coupled with the distinct possibility of Microsoft making Silverlight (et al) some form of necessary Windows update, I think Adobe has it’s work cut out for it.
For the record, I’m rooting for Adobe.
As long as the flash plugin is installed, anything that adobe wants installed can be installed automatically. I.e. the plugin can execute any arbitrary code, including installing Apollo.
Wow! I was aware that the Flash plugin could prompt the user to download updates for itself, just didn’t think this functionality would extend to downloading a new installer and running that to.
I’d love to hear some comment from Adobe on this facet of the plugin or someone else in the know.
also dont forget you’ll be able to bundle the runtime with your apps in the future
gosh!
I think what they plan to do is basiclly have people choose for themselfes Apollo runtime,
Adobe point was always to make interesting and good stuff and in that way to make people want things not to force them to have things
so Apollo developers are big + on this one with their creativity
also, Silverlight vs Apollo is not good comparison
Apollo is completly desktop thing / executable
I don’t think anyone is comparing Apollo to Silverlight. If they are, they are very confused. Apollo is for creating desktop apps. Silverlight is a browser plugin. Thus, the Flash 98, Silverlight 0 statement is perfectly valid, and Apollo doesn’t belong in the picture. If you are going to compare Apollo to anything MS, you should compare it to the .net framework.
“Wow! I was aware that the Flash plugin could prompt the user to download updates for itself, just didn’t think this functionality would extend to downloading a new installer and running that to.”
Did you ever install Central? That’s how it was deployed. If you chose to install it it installed through the Flash Player so you never downloaded an installer (you could see).
I have no idea if this is going to be the route Adobe takes with Apollo. I remember talk about some IT people not liking Central for that reason.
yeah i agree keith, apollo and sliverlight are not even in the same ballpark. silverlight is a browser based technology. if you did compare apollo to .net i think you making another mistake. .net is a completely geard towards making windows applications where apollo is designed to make desktop web applications that are heavily integrated with remote servers…
You should compare apollo to Wpf (.net 3.03.5)
silverlight is wpfe that means it is a part of new .net.
.net 3 is designed to give the ability to develop web applications as well.
For my opinion the big picture is Flex (framework) vs .net
and although I with flash since flash 4, Silverlight (wpf) Rocks!