Danny has a post over on his blog about AIR that I thought was good and worth responding to. He was a very early adopter of AIR but since that time he hasn’t really seen any applications that jump out at him. In fact, he wonders why some of AIRs features wouldn’t be better off incorporated into the browser. He does a lot of his work right in the browser so it makes sense to add things like offline functionality, file system access, etc, right into the browser (security concerns aside). I don’t totally disagree with him.

As cool as AIR is, I still think the browser will be the central point of contact for most web applications. We’ve already seen how AIR is actually pushing the browser vendors to innovate (Firefox 3′s offline support) so I have little doubt that the browser will move more in the direction of AIR. But even with some of AIR’s features, the applications in the browser won’t be desktop applications, and that’s where I see the major benefit of AIR.

To me, AIR represents a true hybrid approach to application development. It uses web technologies and development trends but allows developers to create real desktop applications. That actually may not be valuable for everyone. I hate internet radio in my browser, but Danny doesn’t, and so doesn’t see the need for something like Finetune Desktop. The key question is what do your users want. Do they want an application that lives on their hard drive, installs like any other application and behaves like any other desktop application should (offline, with the file system, notifications, custom chrome, etc) or do they want their application in the browser? There is no correct answer but with the Adobe platform making the choice available to your user is easy. You can build a Flex app and deploy it in the browser (even if/when the browsers get a lot of extra functionality) and/or you can give them the desktop experience with your Flex app running in AIR.

AIR won’t appeal to everyone but that’s fine. It’s a key part of the platform that helps bridge the web and the desktop and provides more choices for developers. Hopefully it’s also moving the browser forward as well.

[tags]Adobe AIR, Desktop, Web applications[/tags]

W00t! All the cool stuff happens when I’m on a plane. In between connections I noticed people on Twitter and email were talking about the new AIR logo that Mike Chambers posted. I wasn’t sold on the new logo at first and nothing will ever beat the rocket, but it’s grown on me. There are a number of different versions out there on the web now, but I haven’t seen the Mnemonic posted yet. So for those of you collecting the square Adobe tiles, here’s the AIR version:

[tags]Adobe AIR, AIR, Logo[/tags]

I had someone ask me today about the fact that zero Adobe bloggers have talked about Bruce leaving. They actually wondered if it was an order from on high about keeping silent. For me, that wasn’t it, and as far as I know, there wasn’t any mandate about commenting on the fact that Bruce is leaving as CEO. I think it’s mostly due to the fact that people in the company were surprised. I didn’t have any inkling but I don’t think the people above me did either. So I think the quiet around the announcement from Adobe is just due to the fact that most people didn’t know early and don’t really have anything to say.

I haven’t heard anything about why Bruce left other than the news reports you’ve all read. But as I sat here today watching the Adobe stock price, I got a very, very valuable lesson in how important one person can be to a company. When I joined Adobe the stock was valued at $42.75, so that’s what the strike price for my stock options are set to. I actually just discovered how to check them recently so I remember a couple of weeks ago looking at them and getting that warm fuzzy feeling because I was helping the company do well and the stock price was going up.

Today, my stock options are worthless (sort of). The stock is at $40.86 after a huge drop off in the past couple of days because of the announcement. I actually think the stock is now a bargain so I’m not worried, but it amazed me how much impact one person could have over both my future and the company in general. Financially everything seems great with Adobe. Bruce reiterated that we’re going to be near the top of our earnings estimates, so that should please the Street. But this news trumped all of that. I didn’t go through the Web 1.0 bubble and this isn’t close to what people experienced during that, but I think I got a bit of a taste. It’s really depressing watching your stock fall by 5% in a day for what seems like no reason at all. I can’t imagine watching it fall by 10-25%. Yikes.

[tags]Adobe, personal, blogging[/tags]