Adobe Apollo has potential... but are we ready for another runtime?

Adobe recently announced the pre-release Alpha build of the Apollo Platform SDK, runtime and documentation. In case you didn’t know, it is a cross-operating system runtime - a platform that will allow developers to create to desktop applications using existing web development skills such as Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript and Ajax. Web applications can be run online or offline through Apollo. It will have the traditional benefits of desktop applications - speed, drag and drop functionality from the desktop to the application, and accessing the file system. Apollo is cross-platform, meaning any application developed for it will run on Windows, Mac and Linux machines. According to Adobe, existing web applications can be easily ported to the Apollo platform.

Unable to resist the temptation, I downloaded the SDK last night and played around with it a bit. The first Alpha release is focused at Flex(TM) based applications whilst the next Beta release will be targeted at HTML based applications. At a first glance, I feel it has a lot of potential. Will keep you all posted about the features and benefits as I explore more of it. Maybe I can post some code too. Meanwhile you can download the Alpha release from the Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/) and go through the samples. I wish they posted sample codes of all the showcased applications, keeping in view that it is a very new technology and early adopters will need a lot of help.