The Freedom of Online and Cross Platform

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Scoble gets pretty close to hitting the nail on the head with this paragraph:

I’m trying to get everything I do online because I want freedom from my computer.

What do I mean about that?

Well, what if my computer gets stolen? I don’t want any data on it.

What happens if Linux comes out with a Macintosh killer? Or if I decide to get a Windows computer again (I’m currently using a Dell Tablet PC because they sent me one to try out) I want to just load one thing: Firefox and go to work. Right now I’m switching between my Dell and my Mac without any problems at all because almost everything I do now is in the browser.

It’s really all about freedom. I’m a huge fan of the cloud model but what goes right along with the cloud model is cross-platform applications. Both in the browser and the desktop. That gives you ultimate freedom. Your data is stored in the cloud and the applications you use every day will move right along with you regardless of what platform you’re using. Devices, operating systems – it shouldn’t matter. Data in the cloud, applications on the desktop and in the browser.

That’s the area where I think Adobe excels. We fully believe in cross platform deployment for all aspects of our platform. We want you to be able to take your data with you wherever you go. We’ve started rolling out services like Share that will help with that. And how do you want to access your data? It doesn’t matter. Think Buzzword. You can have it in the browser (Flash Player) or on the desktop (Adobe AIR). It’s cross-platform either way and your data is all centralized. With the cloud in the AIR, you’re as free as a bird………(I know, that was terrible).

[tags]AIR, Adobe, Buzzword, Flash[/tags]

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  • Mark

    While saying that Adobe “fully believe(s) in cross platform deployment for all aspects of our platform” sounds good on paper, it glosses over a few important things. First, cross-platform inherently means lower (lowest?) common denominator in terms of functionality and performance. People and businesses have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in powerful “node” devices…PC’s, Mac’s, smart phones and other devices. Why would they NOT want to take advantage of the native capabilities from those investments? I have a MAC. Would I rather use an application written for the Mac, with all of the bells and whistles and nice things like, say, hardware acceleration or what’s essentially a “dumb terminal” like the Web browser, Flash or AIR? The answer is easy for me. I’d rather have the Mac and/or a PC.

    The thing that really matters to me is having access to my data and my applications wherever I am. That’s a different problem. I’m sure that somebody can build client side applictions that synchronize data between devices and the Web. There are already versions of tha available today. Groove is one. I’m sure there are others.

    The world constantly ebbs and flows between the pros and cons of centralized processing/data storage and dumb-terminals (Mainframes, the Web and Web browsers)more powerful but harder to maintain smart clients. Rigth now the ease of use and ubiquity of Web-based apps has everyone in a tizzy. Does that mean that we should give up on having PC’s and devices that do better? I certainly don’t want to. Hey, if I’m in a situation where I don’t have my Mac or PC with me or I’m using a Web terminal somewhere, I’d be happy to access my data and do some simple word processing or spreadsheets. But doing that all the time makes my head hurt.

    Remember: Flash and AIR are just dumb terminals, in one case with local storage. Not a big deal folks.

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    Being device-independent requires a good backup policy… that’s another way of looking at the whole thing.

    AIR enables different blends of local and remote storage. We’ve still got to figure out the design patterns of which types of situations benefit from which styles of local/remote, and how and when to synch data stores.

    jd/adobe

  • Luke

    I guess its a bit the fault of the world wide web. Ever since its existence people have been trying to stuff things in a browser (You trust you browser don’t you?). But when it comes to desktop applications, internet (not www) enabled applications never really made it. Ten years ago I though that by 2005 an application like Photoshop would be some tiny desktop app you would download from Adobe and when you start it up for the first time it would download those modules it needed. You don’t have to buy the program just pay for usage. But it seems that everyone wants to shove things in browsers (because we trust that good ‘ol browser). Maybe the world is just waiting for a better platform. What about Photoshop or Flash as an Eclipse plug-in? Now, that would be cool!