I watched part of the Adobe MAX presentation yesterday in which Adobe said that they are acquiring Nitobi, the company behind PhoneGap. PhoneGap is essentially a competitor to Titanium. Not a complete competitor, but read on. This development is likely the harbinger of changing the game entirely. Here’s why.
Further reading: Ars Technica | Adobe Acquires Nitobi
Adobe Flash lost as a web application development standard, and Adobe knows it. They are spending tons of cash right now in a game of catch-up and expect to be the leader in web development again (they were just a short 5 years ago). After their initial, bitter battle with Apple and running Flash apps on iOS, they turned things around and you can now use Adobe tools to deploy apps on iOS. They already released a beta of a complete IDE for building HTML5/JavaScript5/CSS3 applications. It’s called Adobe Edge.
With the power and capabilities of Edge growing with every release (because their customers are demanding it) it is most likely that PhoneGap will be tightly integrated as the de facto framework for building applications in the tool. Much like when Appcelerator purchased the Aptana IDE and converted it into Titanium Studio which allows us to code, build and deploy applications from one tool, Adobe Edge will be a complete IDE for HTML/JS/CSS application development.
Further reading: CNET | Adobe Sharpens Edge
Now, if you are building desktop apps, PhoneGap is not an option because it is exclusively mobile. It’s the main reason that Titanium Desktop became so successful. Unfortunately, Titanium Desktop seems to be an abandoned, or at least orphaned, child in the Appcelerator roadmap. The few Appcelerator employees that I talked to at the conference two weeks ago did not have any answers as to how their desktop product fit into their future plans. They are currently focused 100% on their mobile application development tools. This is most likely because Appcelerator is resource strapped and simply giving all of its focus to what customers are demanding RIGHT NOW.
Adobe has no such limitations. Their AIR Runtime already allows developers to build HTML/JavaScript applications that can run on any desktop OS. Unfortunately, it could not run on every mobile OS, so it will most likely be abandoned and replaced with the eventual PhoneGap successor for mobile apps. I don’t see Adobe abandoning the desktop because they already have a dedicated presence there, and with the (finally) released information about the Microsoft Windows WinRT API in which you can author complete applications with JavaScript, it plays right into the hands of Adobe.
It’s highly probable that Adobe Edge has AIR integration for desktop applications before the official 1.0 release.
So what this gives us is more than one option for every environment. The source code for the GUI would continue to be in one language, but then could be built, or interpreted, to any platform. It will be interesting to see what Adobe does with the PhoneGap platform in the next year.
JavaScript
I find it interesting when I talk to developers who are focused on Java and .NET platforms about how JavaScript will soon replace a huge chunk of what they currently have to do when making applications with a user interface. I would think it would be a source of jubilation – no more worrying about cross-platform UI issues in compiled code – but I find there’s still a lot of resistance and denial even though the facts are all right in front of us.
This next generation of application development is going to be fun, not only because we can reduce the amount of code we need to write, but also because the entire industry is moving away from the immobile desktop and towards the mobile device platform.
8 Responses for "Adobe acquires Nitobi: Look out Appcelerator"
Solid analysis. I was looking for someone to sum it all up.
You’re forgetting that Adobe AIR is still has some mobile connections with Android.
@Todd: No I know that, but my guess is that it will take a backseat to PhoneGap.
They just released Air 3.x to Android within the past day or two, so… I don’t think it’s taking that far of a backseat. I guess we’ll find out if they keep updating it or not.
Yeah, we’ll see. Either way, it’s exciting.
“Adobe Flash lost as a web application development standard, and Adobe knows it.”
Interesting. I can’t say I agree with either part of that assessment though. I do hear from some clients that their managers are pushing to rewrite their Flash applications into HTML5. I tell them my current speciality is Flash so I wouldn’t be the programmer to hire, but best of luck with that. To myself, I think it will be quite a challenge because their RIA is already pushing the Flex framework. In once case, the client’s app used the Google Maps for Flash API, so with Google deprecating that, I can see why they would think Flash for web apps is in trouble.
Also, Adobe said today that several of their new tablet apps previewed yesterday are actually AIR apps. I guess that doesn’t speak to web apps, however.
@Jamie: Yes, the application development world right now is in turmoil, and many development shops might be scrambling to figure just what to make of it all.
Adobe buying a JavaScript based, cross-platform mobile app library, and releasing Edge for interactive applications.
Microsoft announcing WinRT and Metro for application development in Windows 8.
Appcelerator Titanium being the tool used to develop the most applications in the Apple Store.
I’m only making educated guesses at this point, but I can’t ignore the trends and Flash isn’t looking to be the one that survives. When the dust settles, we’ll see where we’re all headed.
Well done, nice writting.
Fully agree i already arged to many the Adobe and Macromedia standed up for multimedia and interaction when never did.
I would like to develop with their tools very soon.
Also i’m a javascript lover, its pure passion, from the most stupid bugs to the power scope management that let think you are running something else rather a web sandbox.
cheers.
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