10 Reasons why Silverlight will fail (in the short term).
July 12th, 2007
1. It’s very uncool. Since when has a Microsoft product been exciting? And their touch technology doesn’t count, they nicked it off Jeff Han.
2. Something else to learn, please, I’ll have a brain overload if I try and take anything else on board.
3. It’s not open source. Flex is. End of story.
4. Flash diehards will never switch.
5. Java diehards definitely won’t switch.
6. I can’t install it.
7. Adobe have all the best people in the industry working for them.
8. It’s not pre-installed on any OS.
9. It has no distribution channel/penetration.
10. You can’t develop on a mac, you have to develop on .net which costs $$$$ (surprise surprise)!
And one reason why it might not fail over time: cash… Microsoft will pump billions into this until it works and they don’t care if they loose money on it for 10 years, just like they are doing with the XBox.
July 15th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
1.) So HD quality streaming video, w/ all the features of Flash and the speed of the .NET CLR is uncool?
2.) So Silverlight will fail because you are unable to know more than one thing at a time?
3.) Flex IDE is opensource, but so is SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop, which you can develop Silverlight in. You don’t have to use Visual Studio. Hell you can use the command line if you want to.
4.) Just like a captain going down with a sinking ship.
5.) See #4.
6.) Well Silverlight IS beta. Millions of other didn’t have an issue installing.
7.) Microsoft has 20% of all computer science PHDs on their payroll.
8.) Flash wasn’t preinstalled either XP or Vista I have here.
9.) Again, its beta dude.
10.) You can develop on Mac, though those tools are beta also. Worst case, you can compile with Mono on a Mac as Mono compiles .Net/Silverlight code. .NET is free to develop on, as you can download the SDK right from MS w/o charge. Their IDE cost money.
Everyone has the right to not like something, though it shows intelligence to give a logical and factual reasoning behind it.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:42 am
Perhaps you didn’t read the bit in brackets: 10 Reasons why Silverlight will fail (in the short term).
I know it will do well, it’s just going to take a very long time.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Response to Jeremiah Morrill:
1.) By cool he means… oh never mind, you just can’t explain cool to someone.
Microsoft isn’t cool. Why does that matter? It doesn’t for developers. However, designers care, knowing full well it makes a statement about Microsoft’s understanding(or lack thereof) of the creative mind. In other words, designers are not going to get on board with Silverlight if it’s just lame, for whatever impact that may have.
And FYI, Flash has thus far proven faster than Silverlight in comparisons(http://metalinkltd.com/?p=93) — and that’s before the many new performance enhancements, including hardware excelleration, which is coming with Flash Player 9.5(http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/releasenotes.html#features).
2.) It has nothing to do with being “unable,” or knowing “more than one thing at a time” — the question is: what is the motivation to learn something new to do something you can already do with other platforms that you already know? That’s the question Flash users are asking, and thus far even the channel9 boards have been unable to answer.
3.) JFYI, Flex IDE(Adobe Flex Builder, or Flex plugin for Eclipse) is actually not opensource, it’s the SDK and compilers which are opensource. http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Source
4.) The problem is the ship is not going down, there’s merely a new ship entering the water. The question goes back to #2 — what’s the motivation to switch ships? Additionally, everyone has their own preference and taste. If the end result is the same, it will be hard to convince someone to try and force themself to change their taste.
5.) I don’t use Java, but see #4.
6.) I’ve had the same problem on 4 machines, two were PCs.
7.) Computer Science Ph.D does not equate to being innovative — in fact the argument can be made it equals just the opposite. Adobe has a track record for innovation, Microsoft has a track record for… well… that’s a touchy subject so I won’t go there, but let’s just say it’s not innovation.
8.) The fact that Flash is no longer pre-installed on Microsft’s OS(now we know why!) yet penetration is still insanely high is evidence of its acceptance in the computer user market. Silverlight may be be pushed to a large percentage(and declining percentage) of users via a Windows update, but it will be hard to make up the rest. And look out for those anti-trust lawsuits, Microsoft.
9.) It’s actually not even Beta, it’s Alpha
10.) The tools for developing on a Mac are, to put politely, very inadequate. But hey, it is beta.
I’ll check back later after the entire Silverlight platform has had some time to mature, but I confess I don’t have much faith — would be happy to be surprised!
July 20th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Response to aaron:
1.) Don’t full yourself with the hardware acceleration. It’s just for fullscreen scaling, nothing more. Silverlight was built with fullscreen hi-res video in mind. And FYI, Silverlight has beat out flash in some benchmarks by 4x. See for yourself at http://bubblemark.com/ . Compare the Silverlight CLR version with any flash 9 on there. I got 66 FPS with Flash and 254 FPS with Silverlight CLR 1.1.
2.) Well for millions of .NET developers out there, Silverlight means they all woke up one morning and new “Flash”. The awesome thing about being in the .NET universe is you don’t have to relearn anything when using new technologies.
3.) Well you just proved me and the original poster to be uninformed
4.) It’s not so much about switching, it’s adding another tool to a developer’s belt. See #2.
5.) Bleh to Java.
6.) Don’t know what to tell ya. It’s not finished yet.
7.) This point could be argued for days.
8.) Flash started out with 0% install base. Can’t Silverlight start there too?
9.) Well you are right and wrong. Version 1.0 w/o the CLR is a week away from release candidate. 1.0 is beta right now. 1.1 (CLR) is alpha
10.) I agree the tools just aren’t there yet. But I’m sure that’ll be the last
Let’s not forget that with silverlight you arent just stuck with one language like in flash. You can choose c#, vb, python, etc with the ability to write your own language via the DLR. Hell I’m sure someone will write an action script compiler for silverlight to wein flash developers.
June 6th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
these are 10 foolish reasons..
July 10th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
So a person with a PHD is deemed less creative than someone who works for Adobe? The reasoning above seems a little ill-informed.