He is just trying to market himself by trashing newcomers. His # 1 reason for the sucketivity of these startups is "Almost no company on this list is using video". This comes from a guy whose job title is "video blogger".
His entire career revolves around camera and camera related stuff. Has this guy done any real tech stuff other than 'assemble computers' ?
His nickname comes from how he would configure machines with vigor, or something -- he would "Scobleize" machines. He did plenty of putting together machines, but he's certainly not a developer.
You are right. The article doesn't make any sense.The article author is trying to imply that ,as Google Chrome comes with Gears,Gears could get more popular than AIR one day and thus be a treat to Adobe. I disagree with the author completely.
Unlike Gears,Adobe AIR doesn't require a browser to exists. Adobe AIR can do everything Gears can do and more. Air is not just about building offline/online apps ("occasionaly connected apps") . Air is about building desktop apps. You can build apps that never connects to the internet in AIR.
Google gears is not a runtime. It requires a browser to survive. AIR is a runtime own its own (almost like Java runtime, if you need anything to compare to). Air apps can be built just using html/javascript. Flash is not required. If you want, you can use flash too .
AIR allows traditional web developers to migrate to desktop development without learning C or Java or VB or whatever. In short AIR allows web developers to build complete desktop apps like Winamp,iCal,Paint etc.that doesnt require a browser/internet connection to exist.
In short, comparing Adobe AIR and Google gears (and hence Google chrome's threat to AIR's existence) doesn't make any sense at all.
the competition between AIR and Gears may not be obvious initially because like what you said, Air and Gears are 2 totally different technologies altogether.
But Gears does affect AIR adoption in some ways. Most AIR developers create AIR apps not as standalone desktop apps but as offline versions of a webapp (eg. Twirl for twitter).
So if you are a developer and you want to offline-enable your webapp (eg. Zimbra), you could do it with Gears or AIR. If Gears is already installed on most of your users' computers, you would more likely do it with Gears. (why force your users to download a piece of sofware to run your AIR app?)
I would say Gears is all about extending the capabilities of web apps by adding desktop-like features like local storages while Air is more of a toolset to build cross-platform desktop software easily.
Each has its own strengths and depending on what your solution requires, one of them would be the appropriate technology choice. But since Google has been hammering the point that the web is the platform of the future, i would expect more developers to develop for the web instead of the desktop (which is a major blow to AIR)
Fonts definitely need some attention from a graphics person. My company's intranet time reporting app looks like it was re-rendered by a techie -- the fonts are small and seem to be designed as bitmaps with no eye to anti-aliasing. It's much more functional, but it looks like crap.
Now, this doesnt mean Flash is better than Javascript.But when delivering heavy weight RIAs, its better to stick on to Flash.Why overload client side with untargeted code?
You don't do that sort of thing in javascript :)
There's a couple of areas where things are different - event handling for example.
Either you use a library, or you feature sniff. Certainly not browser sniff.
Flash is pretty slow and inaccessible. I'd bet my money on javascript every time. The only thing missing is video/audio. Which should be there soon afaik.
flash is actually very much like java in the event handling dept. And javascript is changing to adjust to the superior features that flash has. The argument about people just use the web for information is rediculous, as the majority of ppl play online games, share video via youtube, have myspace/facebook and want VISUAL STIMULATION.
As a programmer, sometimes we have to step our of our comfort zone to see how the rest of the world uses the web. The average consumer responds well to many flash sites. This can not be denied from a developer standpoint.
Companies are making millions on those flash ads, and many of us are dying to get the user base so we can attract those tacky ads. Our stance as developers that this technology, which is on 90+% of computers is useless, may need some reevaluation.
