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There has been a lot of talk in the ColdFusion world about Apollo lately, Adobe’s entry into the desktop software world. I think it’s cool because it reportedly lets any web developer write desktop applications using their existing skills. The Adobe Labs site says this, “Apollo is targeted at making it easy to develop and deploy Rich Internet Applications to the desktop.” But why should I be excited about that? I think there will definitely be some good uses for it, but Adobe is spinning this as the greatest invention since the PC, and I just don’t see it that way. I have spent a LOT of effort and time trying to convince people that web based apps are important and adequate for most people’s needs, and now I’m supposed to start focusing the other direction?Again, I do think that Apollo will be good for some cases, especially where a desktop application makes more sense than putting it in the browser. However, there are already a LOT of mature development environments for the desktop that can easily interact with the Internet, so I’m not sure how well Apollo will catch on. Sure, all the fanatics that love to play with all the new software that comes out of Adobe labs will jump all over this. But I think Adobe is going to have a tough sell when it comes to all the Java and .net developers out there. Not to mention all the web developers that are perfectly happy developing in the browser.But, I could be wrong about this. I’d be happy to hear your arguments to the contrary.