Doesn’t anyone remember Grand Central?
I’m confused. What is Grand Central? Is that Apollo alpha. A pre-cursor or just something everyone wants to forget about? Google remembers it - 611k mentions of it - in fact. Others panned it back then.
Now how come no one else is mentioning it now?
Hey John Dowdell - need evidence? You were there then - right?
So what’s the difference between Grand Central and Apollo? As if I really cared!
Is this a case of selective memory loss, delusion or just a bunch of naive developers following Macromedia/Adobe - to their doom?
UPDATE: Kevin Lynch - the godhead at Adobe/Macromedia spells out the history, logic and technical innards of Apollo. It all sounds very coolio. I wonder if Central developers can migrate to Apollo and save their investment? I also don’t understand the business model for Apollo. Where does Adobe make money?
March 21st, 2007 at 6:17 am
“I’m confused.”
Yes, but acknowledging that is the first step on the road to recovery.
“What is Grand Central?”
It’s the name of a recent initiative to unite various phone numbers you may have:
http://www.grandcentral.com/
“Hey John Dowdell - need evidence?”
… of what?
“So what’s the difference between [Macromedia] Central and Apollo?”
Kevin Lynch already helped you out:
http://www.klynch.com/archives/000086.html
jd/adobe
March 21st, 2007 at 10:43 am
From JD’s link to Kevin: “The first two attempts were part of an experimental project called Central which was code named Mercury and then Gemini after the United States space program, and the current work code named Apollo”
Funny, they sure as hell didn’t advertise Central as being experimental back when they were trying to push it. Weren’t they promising TV ads and such to bring customers to the platform for developers? I seem to remember them telling us something remarkably different back then.
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
” I wonder if Central developers can migrate to Apollo and save their investment?”
Hi Marc, not on a code basis — the scripting language then wasn’t as close to ECMAScript as it is now. But I see people with Central experience as having an edge, just because they’ve considered this type of delivery before.
(The runtime user experience is also much improved this generation — Central had a Macromedia window in which your app would run, along with an application tray where people could switch to applications from other people. Apollo provides a way to make your own full applications using regular webpage techniques, so that your app will be shown in the dock, system tray, process monitor or file directory under its own name, with a wide range of windowing options such as irregular shapes and transparency. The only Adobe chrome is during installation.)
Any bit of code may not be worth it to port, but the experience of thinking beyond-the-browser is definitely carried forward.
” I also don’t understand the business model for Apollo. Where does Adobe make money?”
I’m not qualified to answer this, sorry. I know that the general strategy is to make a bigger pie, to lift the boats with a rising tide, and to recoup investment from the wider market which results. Mike Downey, Product Manager, has better knowledge of specifics than me:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/md/
(Mike’s coming back from Sydney right now, though… will probably be snowed-under the next few days.)
jd/adobe