Adobe AIR Vs Microsoft Silverlight

I attended the official launch party for Adobe (ADBE) AIR (Pacific Region) Monday and as much as the tech is impressive, I walked away with one strong observation: this is a user base war.

Adobe’s Pacific technical director Mark Blair gave the keynote, and I can summarize it as such: online apps offline, platform independent, everywhere. There was a Q&A after the keynote that added to that, but the only main new addition I got from that is that AIR should be coming to Linux this year.

During Blair’s presentation was a slide on the companies developing AIR apps. Some we’ve covered already, like eBay, then there were other names like the NASDAQ (NDAQ) developing with AIR. Locally the Commonwealth Bank was developing an AIR app for Brokers. There was also some impressive demonstrations post show, including a TripIt clone that runs on AIR (post still to come).

There’s no arguing that AIR is highly capable, but so is Microsoft’s (MSFT) Silverlight. Adobe and Microsoft have entered a war of attrition, where like HD DVD vs Blu-ray one will eventually come out on top. Having said that both may well happily co-exist side by side for years to come, but history shows that eventually the market will pick a favorite.

Disclosure: Adobe Australia paid for my trip to the launch

Comments

[User 157833:]

Interesting topic but there are a few things I found misleading:
1. I am a bit disappointed that the article didn't even mention what AIR or Silverlight does
2. AIR vs Silverlight? I have a feeling that you are mixing up Adobe AIR with Adobe Flex/Flash
3. Flex/Flash are proven technology that have been around for quite some time now.

2008 Feb 27 01:44 PM

[NP:]

There is something shady going on here.
Different authors. Same text content (but different images). Same disclosure:
www.techcrunch.com/200.../

Plagiarism, in plain sight?

2008 Mar 06 04:21 AM

[jtc:]

You really mix things up. Silverlight is designed for web but Adobe Air is a technology made for web developers to enable them development of desktop applications. There are more interesting questions like comparing Adobe Flex, MS Silverlight, Google Web toolkit, OpenLaszlo... and of course HTML 5 working draft, that brings many of RIA features to web standards...

2008 Apr 22 05:20 AM