Adobe's AIR: The Future Is On The Desktop?
Monday, August 20, 2007 at 3:37PM 2 Comments 
The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is Adobe's new client runtime that brings Rich Internet Application (RIA) functionality to the desktop. I started hearing a lot about AIR (then code-named Apollo) at MAX 2006. Then, as now, there are some fundamental things about it that I simply don't get, and this post by Doug at CubicleMan.com got me thinking about it again.
Let's first take a step back to Flex, Adobe's platform for RIA development. Flex solves the "dumb and disconnected" problem of Web applications by keeping a channel open between client and server when using LiveCycle Data Services. It combines the best of desktop applications (a rich and intuitive user experience) and Web applications (a centralized data store and easy application distribution). I can understand why Flex is compelling.
AIR on the other hand requires both the runtime environment and the application executable to be installed on each user's local machine.
It's apparently quite easy to convert a Flex application to an AIR application. It's great that AIR applications are cross-platform. And the ability to interact with the user's local file system is a nice new addition. But the real argument I always hear for AIR applications is that the applications can function when the user is disconnected from the Internet, and data can be synched to a central repository when reconnected. The example of sales staff in the field is invariably given.
This is where it begins to lose me. Why is Adobe pushing the desktop as the future platform for deployment of Rich Internet Applications? We've just spent the last ten years forcing the Web application to a point of maturity -- thanks in no small part to Macromedia and now Adobe -- where the richness of the desktop is finally available on the Web. After all that effort, why now turn back to the desktop, and the days of calls to a tech to come install some application on some machine up on the 20th floor?
With increasing Internet ubiquity and relatively affordable mobile broadband, AIR strikes me as something of a solution in search of a problem. At best, it seems a Band-Aid to tide us over to the days of true always-available Internet. I hope there's something to it that I'm not getting yet.
Reader Comments (2)
No matter if we ever hit an "always-available" internet across the globe there will always be a situation where it belies it's name and is not available. Even for 1% of the time if for whatever reason you cannot access it...it may be that exact 1% of the time was when you needed it the most.
None of that really matters in the end because AIR isn't specific to the WEB. While it gets a lot of press in relation to it, it can fully encompass a completely standalone application if the developer chooses. It can be fully internet reliant (Pownce), partially reliant or complimentary to a larger system (Buzzword) or not need one at all (Saffron). Just when you think you can typecast AIR into any given mold or generalization, you will find a developer here or there who baffles all assumptions on what one thought it could do and what the possibilities of what it can do are :)
Charlie, I wrote a lengthy response to your article on my blog just because it needed some love and attention it hasn't seen in a while.
http://cyberdust.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/response-to-adobe-air/" rel="nofollow">http://cyberdust.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/response-to-adobe-air/