

Adobe will drop desktop apps to become web only - jsjenkins168
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2007-10-18T130541Z_01_N17292526_RTRUKOC_0_US-ADOBE-SERVICES.xml

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e1ven
Wow. This is a very bold double-down on Flash and Flex.

This is why Adobe bought Macromedia- They see the future as web-based
applications, and they want control the API. Microsoft got to where it was by
controlling the API people code in, and the environment applications run.
Adobe's showing that they're in a position to control the API for what's next.

This is a _very_ clever move. They're signaling to developers who might be
tempted by Silverlight that they are eating their own dogfood on Flex, and
betting the farm on their tech.

Given the huge investment that Adobe has in existing desktop applications, the
implications of this are huge. Flash/Flex is already a Cross Platform
development environment that's installed on 99% of machines.

They're looking to make it a par with Cocoa or .Net in developers minds... And
it has a good chance of working.

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queensnake
That's great, cuz I'm looking forward to AIR; a single platform that covers
all the bases, plus NBL.

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tocomment
That's a big task. Photoshop? What about Premiere the video editing software?
Do those really make sense as web apps?

Of course it would be neat if they could sell you bursts of processing power
from huge servers somewhere. That would be an improvement over desktop
versions.

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uuilly
Yeah, and what about upload speeds? Are people really going to upload gigs of
DV's and .raw's to edit them? My upload speeds on a consumer broadband
connection have not dramatically increased in the last 5 years.

To me web app replacements of desktop apps sometimes feel like a camping trip.
You can survive just fine, but not comfortably. Esp if your app needs to talk
to the GPU, iPhone or other devices...

That said invisible updates and implicit backups are great.

~~~
alaskamiller
You don't get it. AIR solves all of that. It's offline web-based app. You
don't have a connection, fine. Do what you need to do but the second you're
online, we validate your application and send you live updates.

Imagine a world 10 years from now where everyone bought a fully enclosed
computer like you would buy an iPhone now, but you have to pay a monthly
subscription service to get updates or to use it. That's why all these
companies are making web-os, thinking that's the way of the future. It's going
to be horrible.

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robmnl
There's always going to be free services, don't worry. I'm sure the open
source crowd won't stay far behind, they're able to innovate far faster.

~~~
wmf
Except the open source model doesn't support SaaS very well, so if all
software becomes SaaS then open source becomes much less relevant.

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Shorel
I'm sure RMS is thinking of yet another software license to take care of this.

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gscott
I believe this will be a new way to force upgrade consumers, instead of buying
software and running it for years now you will be forced to pay monthly and
over the long run pay more and if you unsubscribe it won't work at all.

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juanpablo
I think a lot of future apps will not be web-only nor desktop-only but an
hybrid: Desktop apps using the Internet for collaboration and as a source of
information.

Like Google Earth but developed with portability in mind.

~~~
jsjenkins168
This is where Adobe AIR and MSFT Siverlight come in

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fauigerzigerk
I think there are two different questions. One is how we're going to pay for
software and the other is how software is going to be made available and kept
up to date technically. Regarding the latter, it doesn't look like there will
be that binary choice between web and desktop for 10 more years so I'm not
sure what exactly Adobe is going to drop. Local storage? Access to USB
devices? I don't think so. It will become a matter of interpretation by
marketing folks whether a particular application is called a web app or a
desktop app. I mean that's what AIR is all about, isn't it?

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zandorg
Great, so my TCP/IP drops while I'm editing my wedding video and I have to
wait for it to go back up.

"Broadband, as quick as it gets, is still going to have some limitations in
the short term,"

Which indicates they're gambling (heavily) on broadband speeds going through
the roof, so those gigs take a minute to upload.

Further, it says people aren't paying $400 for an application anymore.

In other words, they're going to see a heavy revenue hit soon, a revenue
timebomb, and I see their stock price halving.

I don't own any stock, etc, etc disclaimers.

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alaskamiller
Let's see... $19.99 a month indefinitely or $400 a pop. SAAS is going to be
everyone's new wet dream.

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zandorg
My point is basically the same - that the people who don't pay $400 won't want
to pay $19.99 a month either.

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GammaStats
What about people who don't have (never have had, and never will have) their
computer hooked up to the net? They are screwed...

Some people keep their computers off the net for security reasons. My father
keeps one of his off the net so that he doesn't have to worry so much about
viruses.

And no, he doesn't want to use Linux... And even if he did, ProTools isn't
available for Linux.

Note: to be fair, he doesn't (to my knowledge) use Adobe programs on his
studio computer.

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bootload
Bruce Chizen is the CEO so I was curious to see if they have the technology to
do this. Then I remembered AIR ~
[http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/devt/FE2043E499460693CC2...](http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/devt/FE2043E499460693CC257367007C9285)

 _"... AIR is a runtime program that allows developers to create cross-
platform desktop applications with the same technologies they use for building
web-based applications, such as HTML, AJAX and Flash. At the Adobe MAX 2007
user conference in Chicago on Monday, executives confirmed AIR's importance to
the company's long-term strategy ..."_

So it is technically possible, How will it effect the bottom line? Who knows.
Many companies have stumbled when changing programming paradigms ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm>

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gabrielleydon
Should help with piracy problems also.

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alaskamiller
Another company made similar comments some time ago. Some also-ran called Sun
with something called Java VM. But I guess it's different this time. Obviously
AIR is soooo much better.

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sosuke
AIR is for the desktop. Why would you expect Adobe to use it to deploy their
web applications? It is no where near powerful enough to take on the tasks of
the Creative Suite either.

"Adobe AIR lets developers use their existing web development skills in HTML,
AJAX, Flash and Flex to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the
desktop."

<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/>

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nandan
Validation.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html>

<http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html>

~~~
rms
Never saw that "The Other Road Ahead" essay before, thanks for the link. He
proposed a web service quasi-operating system for people uncomfortable with
normal computers in that essay and I applied to YC with that idea.

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lst
This kind of thing will never happen -- successfully(!) -- the general trust
level in the web is declining continuously...

