Zinc vs Apollo.

Jaspal Sohal (CEO) Multidmedia, a company whom own the software "Zinc" has made some official comments on where they sit against Apollo.

We can't be certain at this point on which of the two are better, as Apollo is still in alpha. Yet, if the race were to be called tomorrow, I must admit I'd go with Zinc simple for its features and maturity. I've used Zinc for years when it had it's former name, so I'm also probably biased.

You make your own decision though (personally Peps vs Coke argument mostly)

Apollo is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop RIA’s."

Within the Flash Community, this has naturally raised questions about the impact Apollo will have on Zinc. Well, the answer to this question is actually in Adobe's own description of Apollo. Many designers and developers have been under the impression (and many still are!) that Apollo is a "SWF2EXE" tool which creates standalone Projector files in the same way that Zinc does. This is not true.

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Comments

• Anonymous
  April 25, 2007
  Zinc does win in multiple instances right now. The biggest one they don't win is cross-OS development. {don't throw rocks yet} Zinc provides development across Mac and PC just fine. The problem then? You have to buy the module for both. Other problem(s)? You have to change your code to adjust to the Mac file paths (if local file access is needed). There are other changes but that is the one I rant into a year or so ago (was annoying to have two code-bases). Apollo, as you know, is 100% cross with no code changes at all. That's the most appealing. Development is super simple as well (where Zinc can be cumbersome at times, not so much so at others). Pepsi vs Coke is about right though. Seriously, I think Multidmedia is worried about Apollo. It has a few things Zinc doesn't and it is only an Alpha (Zinc is on release 2.5). When Apollo was first being shown by Adobe, someone on the Zinc blog had a post stating "Why wait for Apollo? You can do all of that now with Zinc." I responded to the blog post explaining why I would (performance, code base, etc, etc, etc) and received an email about my comments. My comments never made the light of day (even after speaking via email for a couple days with the blogger). ;-) Talk about moderation. ;-)

• Anonymous
  April 26, 2007
  i'm actually using Zinc, it's a good product, however, Apollo had been designed to be natively cross-browser, and that is a HUGE advantage: Zinc windows + MacOs export plug = 900$ !! And from my experience, the macOsX plug is sort of touchy ( means often buggy ) Later Zinc will release a linux plug, wich also will cost big money, and also will generate his own incompatibility That why Apollo will soon be the best choice: crossbrowser.

• Anonymous
  April 28, 2007
  The comment has been removed