Why Flash at 98% matters for Apollo, and why it doesn’t
May 24th, 2007
There are two separate issues here.
First, if the market penetration for Flash was 5%, we wouldn’t be creating Flash, Flex, or even having this discussion. Flash at 98% means there’s nothing stopping you from creating web-based apps in Flex. Because there’s a large and growing supply of Flex apps, there will be a large supply of Apollo apps. Converting a Flex app to Apollo takes a minute or two.
The second issue is the market penetration of the Apollo runtime. It doesn’t matter, at least not in the same way that market penetration of the Flash player matters. When you’re surfing the web and you stumble upon a site that requires a plugin that you don’t have, you might leave. But that’s not how you go about finding and installing desktop apps, is it? You hear about a cool app, you go to the product page, read about it, watch a demo, and decide if it’s something you want to download and install. Do you expect that dekstop app to be 600K or 6MB? With Apollo apps, if you don’t have the runtime, you’re going to need the 6MB. Once you already have it, you’ll just have to download the 600K.
I’ll throw in a third point just to pile it on. There aren’t many websites that you visit more than once. If a website that you’ll probably never see again asks you to install a plugin, you probably wouldn’t bother. Desktop apps, on the other hand, are things that you use over and over again. If it’s worth it to you to take the time to download the app in the first place, do you really care if it takes 1 minute instead of 1 second to download?
The fundamental issue here is that for Apollo to succeed, there needs to be a large supply of Apollo apps. Because Flash is a ubiquitous platform, there are thousands of Flex apps out there just begging to get Apollo-ized. That’s why “98%” matters.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Hopefully the Apollo 1.0 installation is very seamless and integrated with flash, so that they can pull it down in one click, without getting all the “Oh No! You are downloading a file! And the file is executable!!” warnings from Internet Explorer.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
The 98% matters because Adobe will be able to take advantage of the Express Install and auto-update feature of Flash Player. The 98% doesn’t matter because the user is still required to install something “extra”.
My only desire for Apollo application installation is that installation of the runtime must be nearly invisible the first time a user tries to use an Apollo app.
May 25th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Just a thought:
98% penetration of Flash Player 7 (mature markets)
96% Flash Player 8
83% Flash Player 9
I think that’s worth keeping in mind for this discussion. A lot of the really interesting applications will rely on AS3, so 98% is maybe a bit misleading.
May 28th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
You also need to associate the context of what this statistic means, and what is considered mainstream use of Flash Player itself. Apollo is a different context, new shift in thinking and it comes back to context of use.
If YouTube for example were to shift it’s focus from delivering it’s Videos from being housed within a browser to being inside Apollo Runtime, this would in turn stimulate growth. If a developer out there, decides to do it on YouTube’s behalf, it will may be exciting and great, but will mainstream users adopt this developers creation? It will come down to how appealing it is and whether it becomes a widely used application or one simply used by Apollo enthusiasts.
My overall point is, having a majority distribution status is fantastic, but it’s the context of the technology that derives it’s true success story. Windows has over 90% Client-PC status, billions of dollars are invested yearly into making applications work on the Windows platform, most are so secondary that end-users don’t realise what’s under the hood, it’s case of associating appropriate amount of context and substance that appeals, not statistics.
Flash Player exist’s on Windows, most don’t load up Windows excited they have Flash Player installed.. they are more focused on watching “Angry German Kid” scream at his computer on YouTube or whatever it is they prefer to look at from a multimedia experience. The bits that piece it together are simply plumbing… and most really don’t care provided it doesn’t interupt their internet fix and causing them concern on any security hazors that may apply.
-
Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Scott,
I’m not sure you understood my point.
A.) Developers feel comfortable deploying Flex applications because they know that enough people have Flash installed to make it worth while.
B.) A large supply of Flex applications means the potential for a large supply of Apollo applications because it’s so easy to convert from Flex to Apollo.
To me, that’s the only context in which Flash player market penetration matters.
If Adobe ends up using the Flash player as a means of deploying the Apollo runtime, then that would be an interesting development, but it’s purely speculation right now.
The next key point that people need to understand is that deployment of the Apollo runtime and installation of an Apollo app will be a seamless process (James Ward talks about bundling the app & runtime together in an MSI or DMG here: http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2007/05/27/james-ward-on-flash-flex-and-apollo/ ).
So, as long as the user believes there’s a compelling reason to install an app, the developer doesn’t have to worry.
You’re making it sound more complicated than it really is. Of course, that is your job