Observations from MAX 2006
My first MAX conference was a blazing success. Arriving on Tues am (and unfortunately missing most of the keynote), I stayed for 3 days, leaving on Thu pm, for a long trip home. (While I live in California, my trip home involved retrieving luggage from the bellhop and waiting 15 minutes in the taxi line. Then, fortunately, only about 15 minutes in the taxi – with one very “taxi” maneuver – jumping from the middle lane to the front of the left turn lane just before the left turn light switched on. Waiting for a slightly late flight. Then, a 2-1/2 hour bus ride up to Sonoma County, where my caring wife will pick me up and drove me home. Overall, started this journey about 3:15 pm, it’s now 7:35 pm at SFO and I hope will about 10:30 pm. I really feel for the folks who have to fly across the country or overseas.)
Most of my time was spent at the Apollo pod. Oddly, we were at the back of the exhibit room, facing the back wall. But, folks found us nonetheless. We got lots of time and focus at the keynotes each morning. At the pod, I found most folks telling me that they really love Flex and that they can’t wait for Apollo -- everyone wants to be on our private beta. We will have a version up on Adobe labs in early 2007.
The demos of applications on Apollo were a real hit, including Ascension (Mike Chambers' music app), eBay on the desktop, the Buzzword word processor, and the xif collaboration client. Lots of folks told me about the applications they have now in Flex or Flash or HTML that they want to move to Apollo. This is across a broad array of industries, from elearning to government to finances.
Many asked me about the installation process for Apollo and Apollo rich internet applications (RIA). The Apollo runtime needs to be installed just once, like Flash Player or Adobe Reader. Your internet application can be installed just like a traditional desktop application: download from a website, pushed out to desktops, installed from a CD and so on. Once on the desktop, an Apollo RIA will be integrated into the desktop, allowing launch from OS mechanisms, such as the Start menu on Windows or the Dock on Macintosh. Another question was about the security model, which is an area we are still working on internally. That’s obviously an area we need to communicate about early.
Everyone is excited about incorporating Flash and HTML and PDF into their desktop RIA’s in Apollo. You can see the FAQ, presentations and other stuff we have right now up on the Adobe labs website for Apollo.