Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » Adobe wants to make desktop apps sexy again

December 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Adobe wants to make desktop apps sexy again

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The buzz among the technorati is all about Adobe's forthcoming Apollo project.

Apollo will enable Web applications, sometimes known as gadgets, to be installed on the desktop.

According to a podcast Michael Arrington did with Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief software architect, on TalkCrunch, Apollo can help a user "do things that previously had been limiting in a browser," Lynch said.

Lynch goes on to explain that a desktop application gives you access to great local storage, and, most startling of all, it will run regardless of whether you have any Internet connection.

With an icon on your desktop for notifications, it even allows for a "closer relationship with your users," Lynch said.

Google "Apollo project" and you'll get hundreds of hits with bloggers all talking about Apollo as if this were some revolutionary idea, a program that runs locally.

I'll say one thing. It is nice to see the backlash concerning Web-based applets or gadgets setting in so early. It is happening even before these gadgets have completely taken off.

Perhaps Intel was way ahead of its time when in 1996 it introduced the idea of Hybrid Applications (apps that combine data taken off the Internet with desktop compute power). Hybrid sounds a bit like Ajax and a lot like Apollo.

Andy Grove, then CEO at Intel described a hybrid application as one that runs locally while getting its content from the Web.

"The hybrid application is what we will use for a long time to overcome the limits of the available bandwidth. Such applications involve, for instance, ways of compressing and downloading data via telephone lines and then storing that data on a PC hard drive for accessing later," Grove said.

The technorati are quite excited about Apollo's ability to create RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) for the desktop. Isn't that what SaaS (Software as a Service) is all about? You can run and use Salesforce.com online as well as off.

When I read this stuff sometimes I feel like I'm Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner. Somebody, please let me out.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 20, 2006 10:50 AM

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