Twitter reports of an impressive Apple tech demo have turned into blog rumors that Steve Jobs and Co. might be developing their own Flash alternative. When Apple introduced something called "Gianduia" at the WOWODC (World of WebObjects Developer Conference) last June, nobody was viewing it as a Flash killer. In the wake of Apple's war on Flash, though, bloggers at AppleInsider have revisited some of the tweets coming out that conference, and decided that Gianduia is a Flash-killer.
Gianduia "essentially is browser-side Cocoa (including CoreData) + WebObjects, written in JavaScript by non-js-haters," tweeted developer Wolf Rentzsch, who added that his "jaw dropped" at the demo. Rentzsch's tweets have become the main source material for today's reports about Guanduia, but nobody's mentioned that he's one of the developers of ClickToFlash, a very useful Safari add-on that keeps Flash objects from loading until you click them.
Rentzsch never said Apple was trying to replace Flash, he just said that webapp tools like SproutCore and Cappuccino would have some serious competition. However, Apple has been using Gianduia for its own web apps lately, especially the ones that plug into Apple's WebObjects. That includes a whole bunch of Apple Store features. Okay, big news, but maybe not big enough to entirely kill Flash.
If Gianduia is all JavaScript-based, is this anything new? Apple has been backing JavaScript and hating on Flash for some time now, and the news that it's developing its own JS-based solution for Rich Web Apps only seems to confirm that position. I'll freak out about Gianduia when it starts to grow outside of Apple's own (admittedly, pretty cool) webapps. It could become the next big thing, but right now, I suspect it's just a bunch of pundits riding the hype of the Flash wars.
Gianduia "essentially is browser-side Cocoa (including CoreData) + WebObjects, written in JavaScript by non-js-haters," tweeted developer Wolf Rentzsch, who added that his "jaw dropped" at the demo. Rentzsch's tweets have become the main source material for today's reports about Guanduia, but nobody's mentioned that he's one of the developers of ClickToFlash, a very useful Safari add-on that keeps Flash objects from loading until you click them.
Rentzsch never said Apple was trying to replace Flash, he just said that webapp tools like SproutCore and Cappuccino would have some serious competition. However, Apple has been using Gianduia for its own web apps lately, especially the ones that plug into Apple's WebObjects. That includes a whole bunch of Apple Store features. Okay, big news, but maybe not big enough to entirely kill Flash.
If Gianduia is all JavaScript-based, is this anything new? Apple has been backing JavaScript and hating on Flash for some time now, and the news that it's developing its own JS-based solution for Rich Web Apps only seems to confirm that position. I'll freak out about Gianduia when it starts to grow outside of Apple's own (admittedly, pretty cool) webapps. It could become the next big thing, but right now, I suspect it's just a bunch of pundits riding the hype of the Flash wars.