Is it Apollo vs. WPF?

Michael Gartenberg | March 19, 2007, 09:48 AM

Adobe is announcing that an Alpha version of their Apollo software. What does Apollo do? It lets you build desktop centric and cross platform versions of Flash or AJAX applications. This is really the notion of write once, run anywhere that's eluded a lot of other stuff in the past. One of the biggest issues with web based apps is they just don't work at all in a disconnected state. By creating an environment that allows those apps to function offline and seamlessly re-connect, Adobe hopes to bridge the gap between the online and offline worlds. What makes it more important is that the effort is not limited to a single OS or platform but will work across multiple operating systems. The initial version will work with both Mac OS and Windows and will later support Linux as well. The core environment leverages standards such as HTML and Javascript. Of course, Adobe is not alone here. This effort competes to some extent with Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Presentation Foundation/Anywhere. Microsoft hopes WPF will become an alternative to Flash and hopes to leverage this functionality on to other devices and platforms, recognizing that there's more to the world these days than Windows but at the same time leveraging Windows look and feel and development tools.

It's a little too early to call the winner here. Adobe clearly has the leverage of the huge Flash market and has an excellent cross platform, multiple platform centric story. Microsoft is going to have to work pretty hard to gain some credibility here when it says it plans to have WPF play everywhere (perhaps we'll hear more of this at Mix 07). Microsoft has done some very nice work on WPF (look at apps like the NY Times Reader) and WPF/E is here. Bottom line, this is a new battle for the hearts and minds of developers that will once again raise questions about the importance of the underlying operating system in future.

Update - Scoble has a few comments as well as does Ryan Stewart over at ZD.