Marc on Apollo
"When will Adobe/Macromedia learn? Why would someone want to lock themselves into a proprietary, closed platform - like Apollo? Unfortunately none of the (so-called) analyst, experts out there plugging Adobe - has brought this up yet. I’m not sure why they think that desktop based apps - connected to the Internet - are so new or different - or why locking yourself into an Adobe platform is smart, but both Scoble and Arrington seem to love it. One could argue that by enabling developers to easily connect media, web and the desktop together - that they’ll be able to get further faster - but would someone please mention to these poor schmucks who swallow this pitch that if you’re hopelessly locked into a proprieary platform - that the owner of the platform (Google, Microsoft, Adobe, MySpace) can do ANYTHING they want - at any time and discard you as fast as - well as fast as Macromedia ripped of Laszlo. So if history is any guidance, the ONE company who you’d NEVER trust - as far as you can throw them - is exactly the people shoveling you this Apollo crap. What open standards does Apollo support (besides http, HML and tcp/ip?) How could it have been done better - open? How many young companies have they already ripped off, stolen their IP or made promsies to - which they’ll break? I can’t believe nobody is calling them on this atrocity of a platform? Well I am. Everything Macromedia ever did to try and provide an integrated platform for developers - has failed. Why do you think Jeremy Allaire had to leave Macromedia to go do Brightcove? Well anyway - the platform sucks, stay away from it. But it gives me an excuse to use one of my favorite acronyms - YACP"
http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2007/03/yet-another-closed-platform
I think Marc has a valid point... not really about platform openness, doesn't mean much if the platform itself sucks, but about Macromedia failing horribly every time they try to create a dev platform. If I'm going to force everyone to install an update to view my site, it's a no brainer, I'm going to go with WPF or WPF/E, not Apollo.