Some great info on Apollo on Mike Chambers’ podcast today.
My biggest concern (and I know I’m not the only one) was the handling of the runtime aspect of Apollo. This brings up a number of issues. A. You distribute your app, which needs the runtime. How do you know if the user has it or not? B. If they don’t have it, how easy is it going to be for them to get it? C. When multiple versions come out, how do you know which version they have, will that version support your app? What if they need to upgrade?
The podcast handled all my concerns pretty well.
1. Apollo files can be distributed as “.air” files which is just your app, and relies on the runtime. But you will also be able to bundle them as .msi installation files, or whatever the equivalent on the mac is (.pkg?). So, yes, you will be able to distribute the runtime!
2. Also, built in features in the Flash player, which already allow automatic updating of itself, will be leveraged to trigger Apollo runtime installation. (I think I understood that part right.)
3. Each version of the Apollo runtime will have the earlier versions of the Apollo libraries built in, and your app can specify which version it needs. So as long as the user has the latest version, you should be fine. They won’t need to have 5-6 different versions installed. That brings up a secondary concern on the size of the runtime, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Anyway, head over and listen to the podcast yourself. Good stuff.
> That brings up a secondary concern on the size of the runtime, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
fyi, the older libraries will be downloaded as needed. i.e. they wont bloat the Apollo runtime install.
mike chambers
mesh@adobe.com
Thanks for writing this down! For us non-native english speakers it’s often easier to read an english text rather than listening spoken text.
What would interest me most about Apollo is how good the system-integrity is, e.g. file writing, communicating with the OS, etc. Stuff that Zinc is currently handling for me.