Promoting Apollo with Established Desktop Applications

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I love working from home. One one hand, you never leave the office. On the other hand, you never leave the office, so when inspiration strikes, even if it’s 8:00 at night, you can go right into your work environment. I think I’ve had Eclipse open for 48 hours straight at this point.

But while I was putting the finishing touches on getting my home machine setup, I had a thought about Apollo. TextPad is my lightweight text editor of choice, and I need to have it on any machine I’m doing work with. When I went to download it I got to thinking about how Apollo might work as a platform for applications like these. After thinking about it a little bit more, I wondered if it would be possible to bring people like the guys who make Textpad into the Apollo fold and see if they’re interested in help with building an Apollo-fide TextPad.

Adobe is already working with some big names (including eBay) with Apollo, but it would be interesting to see if these guys who have very useful desktop applications might want to check out Apollo.

[tags]Apollo, Desktop Development, TextPad, Adobe[/tags]

Related posts:

  1. Apollo – Revitalizing the Desktop
  2. What is the Audience for Apollo?
  3. Textpad Syntax File for Flex
  4. Track Apollo News with yourminis.com
  5. What Is Apollo For?
  • http://www.richardleggett.co.uk Richard Leggett

    It’s a really cool idea, lots of developers have adopted the USB stick approach to carry with them their core apps. But I worry about this idea. Mainly because something like a text editor has to do some fairly heavy lifting and intensive operations. For example opening and searching a 2mb XML (maybe a XAML, server log or SQL dump) file. Just “opening” a large text file is something that requires some low level filesystem access, something that might be considered too dangerous to implement in Apollo’s featureset. So that would lead to the problem of the TextPad team having to develop a “light” version on top of their existing one, writing it in a new language and keeping it consistent with the desktop version, which if they are a large company is probably not a problem, but if not they’d really have to justify the numbers. I’d use it though so sorry to be a downer! ;)

  • Pingback: Danny-T.co.uk » Non web apps with Apollo

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

    Nope, that’s a pretty good point. Although with E4X you can do some sweet XML searching, but if we’re talking about other text files, no dice.

    TextPad was just the one that got me thinking, but there are other “must have” desktop apps that might be candidates. Service Capture? IM (Meebo?). I wonder how many of those could actually be implemented in Apollo.

  • http://www.richardleggett.co.uk Richard Leggett

    Absolutely, something like the Flickr Uploader would be fantastic. Drop your photos in there because you happen to be connecting your camera/memory-card/bluetooth phone to *that* particular computer, so it’s still easier than the HTML manual upload and is the sort of app you find pre-installed in web cafe’s, like AIM/MSN Msgr. Fauxto was also mentioned which goes hand in hand there. I don’t know about you, but I have the (costly) pro apps I use on my machine, like WSFTP Pro (because I’ve never found anything quite like it!), but then I have the free ones I just go download when I’m on another machine, which happens a lot. In that case it would be SmartFTP. I think the gap you’ve identified would match those apps perfectly, as well as new apps that we don’t yet have.

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

    SmartFTP would be a GREAT example, much better than TextPad :) . Those kinds of applications that already link the web and the desktop could be really cool showcases for Apollo. It would be neat to see an Apollo version of SmartFTP or Filezilla, brands that people are already familiar with as desktop apps. Nice call Richard.

  • JB

    Why would you want these desktop applications built as yet another desktop application? Just so it can be “cool” inside of Apollo? SmartFTP and TextPad are already great desktop applications, no need to re-write them in another language or framework.

    If anything, I would want them in a webpage (constrained by the browser, as you would say) so that I could access and use the program anywhere. I don’t want to have re-download the desktop app and install it on every machine I may use. If I could just go to the webpage and use it without any install I’d be much happier.

    I’ve been reading a lot of these predictions for 2007 and most of the “Adobe” bloggers are betting big on desktop hybrids with Apollo. I think you are more likely to see a realistic prediction like that of Alex Barnett: “my bet here is that pure play brower-based app development will be the winner of 2007, 2008 and 2009 :-) ” – see last paragraph on RIAs: http://www.alexbarnett.net/blog/archive/2006/12/20/On-Web-Dev-Trends-in-2007.aspx

  • http://www.jalpino.com JAlpino

    @JB – I don’t think its a matter of the Adobe community wanting re-writes of already established software, as is more of us wanting the ability to integrated them with Apollo and/or make use of similar functionality. (at least thats my take on it).

    As far as the reference to Alex Barnett’s predictions, he is probably right and Apollo development falls right into that. Apollo apps can be built with “pure play browser-based app development” using straight HTML, Javascript and/or Flex if you desire. Check out this video ‘interview’ with Christian Cantrell on Apollo http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2840522561992638726&hl=en posted by Mike Chambers.

  • http://www.chrisrebstock.com Chris

    @JB

    You make a very good point, and I don’t think rewrites of already existing applications into the Apollo framework was quite what Adobe had in mind.

    Apollo is supposed to enable a whole new breed of applications that are freed from the browser. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether that vision will be a successful one. You would have to install them of course, which is a definite drawback over just being in the browser. At the same time, being file system native enables you to do quite a bit more than you could if you were just in a browser, for example all of those “office replacement” online apps are shadows of the original applications they cloned. The only advantages they offer are that they don’t have to be installed and you get centralized access to your data. As usual, offline support sucks in almost every single one of them. If they do offer it (Scrybe claims to), its only simple offline access of whatever content they could store in a cookie.

    The way that web apps are made today just isn’t compelling enough to be more than a novelty (as you said, most of them are just cool because they are in a browser). So far I haven’t heard of any of these browser apps gaining truly widespread usage (Youtube and Myspace don’t count as browser based apps). Apparently ripping a user away from offline access to their data, and handing them a suite that offers them 60% of the functionality they had before isn’t really a recipe for success.

    To truly make a successful web app you need to leverage the advantages that the web offers over being local, cloning a desktop app into Apollo sounds like acquisition bait to me, rather than innovation. (If it works) Apollo will help with that, as it lets you play in that gray area, where you can give users what they expect at the local level, while still centralizing their data.

    At any rate, if you’re a smart developer you won’t be betting the whole business on the success of Apollo anyways, its not impossible to develop an app with the browser in mind, and then tag on native filesystem functionality through Apollo later. This appears to be the strategy that nimbus is using:

    http://www.colettas.org/?p=53

  • JB

    Chris,

    That’s the most sensible post on Apollo I’ve seen yet. I completely agree with you. I see Apollo being used as the “cool” toy that’s an after thought to most web applications for the Silicon Valley types who use the offline/online browser capability. Those of us out here in the normal world realize that most users are just getting used to the world that the browswer provides, hence why YouTube and Myspace are so popular.

    Office apps are really far away from taking away from their desktop counterparts as would a Photoshop clone or a TextPad clone. Right now they are just “cool” and that’s only to a select few. Nobody else is paying attention other than a quick look…maybe.

    If Apollo is going to succeed and WPE/F, its going to have to be with something better than an already popular desktop application or a New York Times Reader. Who wants to download the reader and a plugin to read the same information you can read easier in your browser of choice at nytimes.com? Probably just techies which is a really small portion of people in online users.

    I’m just skeptical that 2007 is going to be the year. I think you are going to have to wait for the next generation of kids to grow up before these types of things become really mainstream.

    IM, Myspace, YouTube are today, RIAs are tomorrow (next gen beyond 2007).

  • JB

    I think you are much more likely to say Flex will be big (has a better chance at least) in 2007. Not Apollo so much.

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

    Awesome discussion, I’m sorry I went to bed for half of it. JB, you’re right when you say that SmartFTP and TextPad are already perfectly good desktop applications, but one thing that Apollo allows you to do is deploy desktop applications, with the same code base, across two (and eventually three) major operating systems. Is that worth rewriting your code? Not necessarily, but if Adobe wanted to chip in some help and leverage the brands those guys have built…maybe – we’re in the theoretical here.

    And Chris, very good comment. I think once Apollo hits the wild you will see some very bad applications. But once people get a feel for what can be done with it, those applications are going to get more sophisticated. I’m just not sold on the idea that people are going to keep using web applications as their primary platform. I hope that we’ll see companies release a web version and an Apollo version so that when people are on their primary machine, they can use the more robust Apollo app, but when they’re on another machine they can access the web app which would have all of their data stored.

  • http://www.BenYehudaPress.com Larry

    One thing that would make a compelling for a desktop app is a local data store. Will Apollo have msqlite? One of the current advantages of building a web app is that there’s a sql layer to store the data. One of the disadvantages is that I’m keeping my data on someone else’s machine. There’s an app I’m thinking of building that would heavily interact with a public web site, would need occasional updates when the public web site changes, and store historical data. Certainly the first two play to Apollo strengths.

  • http://danny-t.co.uk DannyT

    Why re-develop already common apps?
    win, mac, lin – develop once deploy many.

    Why go back to desktop when having the convenience of the web is so great?
    In 2 years i’d say this is a moot point, for now: ever been through a tunnel on a train? So what if i’ve just done everything I ever did on the desktop in a browser app, if when I go into that tunnel it’s all lost because I lost connectivity?

    “If Apollo is going to succeed and WPE/F, its going to have to be with something better than an already popular desktop application or a New York Times Reader.” – Exactly! Give people a chance to get their heads around developing for web AND desktop and see what they come up with rather than shoe-horning web apps to desktop (rss readers) or desktop apps to web apps (photoshop clones).

    The truly great Apollo-esque apps will be those that harness the core benefits of both platforms (web & desktop) but also allieviate the pains of both.

  • Thomas

    There are some RIA’s that are currently using Java Web Start as the tie in with the desktop. I believe these apps are ripe for Apollo. Azerus is doing it as is Streampad.

  • http://flash-communications.net Brian Lesser

    I think an important driving force for Apollo will be feature competition between Web applications. Once developers understand they can make their AJAX applications more powerful by extending them into the desktop, Apollo will be taken very seriously. The only threat to Apollo is if AJAX developers find another way to do the same thing.

  • JB

    The other way: WPE/F (or whatever its called from Microsoft).

    I see the biggest threat to Apollo being Adobe itself. Not getting the word out beyond their community and overpricing it just like Flex (mainly talking about the data services, although you could argue the builder is expensive for a minor plugin to a free IDE).

    Outside of Silicon Valley people are still just getting used to the browser, that’s why Ajax is really taking off. I don’t think most people are ready to cycle back to desktop apps just yet. I know Flex is browser based, but I really think the reason Adobe is having so much trouble getting it out there is because of Adobe’s reputation for complicated, expensive software (not just anyone can pick up and use photoshop or Flash successfully like a pro) and the latest trend towards open source. My customers, at least, are tired of vendor lock in and want to ride the wave of open source software that promises quicker development cycles for a while.