Apollo is All Over (the place)

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Seems like there has been a big ramp up in the amount of Apollo information out there. I was able to talk with Kevin Lynch last week about Apollo, and I published the information on my ZDNet blog.

In addition, Ted Patrick and Mike Chambers will be at Yahoo! Hack Day building Apollo applications “all day and night”. It’s going to be a great chance to see Apollo in action.

Lastly, Aral Balkan pointed out that AU interactive’s 10 Things that Will Make Or Break Your Website included a mention of Apollo at #9.

[tags]Adobe, Apollo, Yahoo Hack Day[/tags]

Related posts:

  1. The Best Apollo Information Out There
  2. Apollo at the SAP Community Conference?
  3. Unofficial Apollo FAQ Updated
  4. Living Life Online (and Thinking About Apollo)
  5. Mike Downey on Flash and Apollo
  • http://http//www.brooks-bilson.com/blogs/rob/ Rob Brooks-Bilson

    Ryan,

    Interestingly enough, I was at the Gartner AD Symposium earlier this week, and there wasn’t a mention of Apollo (or Flex for that matter) to be made.

    Most of the analysts there were really hyping up Ajax and the whole web 2.0 thing. One really interesting comment came from Daryl Plummer, Managing VP & Gartner Fellow where he put up a slide basically saying that RIA’s were web 1.0 while Ajax is web 2.0.

    Gartner really seems to be bent on Ajax, LAMP, etc., while essentially ignoring technologies like Flex and Apollo, at least as far as what they were pitching at the AD symposium.

  • http://www.bit-101.com Keith Peters

    “Apollo is All Over” scared me. I thought it had died or something. :)

    Rob, I don’t see Apollo as so tied to the RIA concept or as any type of competition to Ajax. Apollo is for making desktop apps that can be connected to the net. I think of an RIA as something that lives in a web page on a browser. You can use Ajax to make Apollo desktop apps.

  • http://http//www.brooks-bilson.com/blogs/rob/ Rob Brooks-Bilson

    Hi Keith,

    When the Gartner analyst started talking about extending Ajax to off-line apps, the “keep an eye on it” solution repeatedly mentioned was Javascript on the server (esp. Sun’s current work).

    I realize where Apollo fits, but my main point is that the “big” analysts still don’t seem to be paying attention, and are pitching OSS solutions and Ajax/JavaScript based toolkits to their subscribers with no real mention of the alternatives out there.

    A point they continued to make is that people don’t want connected desktop apps, they WANT to run applications from within their browsers. This is a battle I think is going to be an uphill one that Apollo is going ot face – just as Central did.

  • http://www.bit-101.com Keith Peters

    My off the cuff reply is that you should ask people what they want, not ask analysts what they think people want.

    But beyond that, it’s not really a matter of what people want. I don’t think people were going around yearning for myspace, or ipods, etc. You come up with an idea, people see it, say that’s cool, and it becomes popular. Doesn’t really matter if they wanted it or not befor it existed.

    A few well thought Apollo apps will bring it popularity whether analysts talk about it at their symposiums or not. As for Central, it had a number of shackles that prevented it from becoming anything useful. Hopefully the lessons were learned.

  • http://http//www.brooks-bilson.com/blogs/rob/ Rob Brooks-Bilson

    Keith,

    I guess I’m looking at this from a corporate perspective, and not a consumer one. In my world, analysts do carry a lot of weight with what they say and recommend.

    Having worked a lot with analysts, I know it seems that many times they really have no clue, but at the same time, it’s hard to deny that the research they put out (at least the good ones) comes from many long discussions with customers and vendors trying to figure out what problems people are trying to solve (which does translate to what types of tools/technologies they want/need).

    I’m not trying to put Apollo down here, just trying to point out that so far, the majority of the buzz/discussion I’ve seen has been within the Adobe community and not the larger application development world at large, and wondering why that is. Is it just a matter of time since Apollo is still pre-release, or is there more to it?

  • http://www.bit-101.com Keith Peters

    Yeah, I did preface it as an “off the cuff” reply. :)

    I guess an important thing to remember is that other than a few conference demos, nobody outside of Adobe has seen or worked with Apollo. Even the demos are just a couple of apps created by a couple of Adobe employees. Once they let the creative members of the community loose on it, you are going to see some really cool things surfacing.

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    Wow, great stuff guys.

    I was trying to follow some of the Gartner stuff Rob, and I came to kind of the same conclusion that you did – the analysts are all hyping Ajax applications. What worries me is that I’m not really sure why they’re doing that. I don’t think I was able to find any specific reasons they gave, but they could have just flown over my head.

    Keith, I think you’re right, I think people are going to want better applications than Ajax is capable of. There’s going to be some disagreement of course, but in the end, I think Flash wins. Wallop has been fascinating for me to watch because people really like the way it “feels”. But some people also don’t like how different it is from their typical browser experience.

    It will be interesting to see how Flash and Flex developers work to build these great applications without putting people outside of their element (the browser). Apollo will go a LONG way towards that, because once you get out of the browser, people’s perceptions change. Thanks for leaving the comments guys.

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    I guess an important thing to remember is that other than a few conference demos, nobody outside of Adobe has seen or worked with Apollo. Even the demos are just a couple of apps created by a couple of Adobe employees. Once they let the creative members of the community loose on it, you are going to see some really cool things surfacing.

    Absolutely! That’s something people forget. We’re still talking about a product that is in a very pre alpha stage.

  • http://www.bit-101.com Keith Peters

    Yeah, Ryan. Actually I’d say it’s amazing that it has gotten the attention it has, given the stage of its development.

  • http://http//www.brooks-bilson.com/blogs/rob/ Rob Brooks-Bilson

    One thing that I do think is going to swing a lot of weight in the Flex world is what SAP’s doing with Flex. Here at my company, we’re in the midst of a large SAP roll-out. I’m just getting started getting my web apps team up to speed on Flex, with the idea being that our SAP group is at some point going to want to create additional interfaces into the SAP system, and that already having the Flex experience will be very helpful.

    I really think the adoption of Flex by packaged apps vendors will help push Flex further into the enterprise.

  • http://http//www.brooks-bilson.com/blogs/rob/ Rob Brooks-Bilson

    Ryan/Keith,

    I’m looking forward to seeing what types of apps beyond the examlpes Adobe’s shown so far roll-out as Apollo progresses. Adobe/Macromedia has been ahead of the curve with things before, so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out…

  • http://blog.xsive.co.nz Campbell

    “I guess an important thing to remember is that…..”
    Amen to that. There are some really creative people out there (no offence to Mike etc) but once these peeps get thier hands on it Apollo is going to blow up, and hey Ajax is a part of APollo too…so theres no reason that people pimping apollo wont jump on board once they get to have a play too! :)

  • http://games-cheat.dsll.info POle

    I’m just getting started getting my web apps team up to speed on Flex, with the idea being that our SAP group is at some point going to want to create additional interfaces into the SAP system, and that already having the Flex experience will be very helpful.

  • anonymous coward

    Ryan,
    I feel your blog could have such a better tone if you stopped abusing sensationalist headlines. I bet lots of people feel the same way, see the headline and click on it right away – but feel cheated when they come and read the article about something different. Yes, you create a lot of traffic sure, but you do loose a lot of credibility.

    cheers man and keep up the good work anyways,

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    This one wasn’t supposed to be taken that way. It wasn’t until I read Keith’s comments that I realized that’s how it might be construed. I just didn’t add the parenthesis quickly enough for MXNA to pick them up.

  • http://www.qqaq.info/browsers.html Bloe

    A point they continued to make is that people don’t want connected desktop apps, they WANT to run applications from within their browsers. This is a battle I think is going to be an uphill one that Apollo is going ot face – just as Central did.

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  • http://howtorepairarelationshipsite.com/ How to Repair a Relationship

    Hi Ryan,

    First off I would like to say you have an awesome site, there’s so much to learn. I really enjoyed reading the link about the “10 things that will make or break your website” AU interactive’s.

    Awesome Job….Keep Up The Hard Work