Gianduia, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways..

Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Apple Vs. Flash war of words seems to be headed for a showdown soon, and I don't mean the court case. AppleInsider recently posted an article looking into a little known client-side, standards based framework for Rich Internet Apps developed by Apple for creating online apps and poised to shake the the walls of Adobe Flash's proprietary sand castle.

This is potentially amazing news and we're bound to hear a lot more next month at the 2010 WWDC event in June.

The question that's been asked by countless bloggers of late is, "If Apple feels Flash is such a nightmare then why aren't they developing an open alternative?" Ask and you shall receive. It's called Gianduia, named after an Italian hazelnut chocolate, (Cocoa, Cappuccino, Java, Gianduia..?) and it uses RIA features in HTML5 to create "rich online applications built using web standards, with no need for a proprietary web plugin like Flash or Silverlight."

You can see it in action on Apple Retail site on the iPhone reservation system, and its Concierge service for Genius Bar reservations,(shown below) and Personal Shopping programs. I was just three days ago using the reservation app, I would add without knowing it was an app, but I was a little gaga over how beautiful it looked and performed.

Of course, Gianduia is only for online apps and what we're all waiting for, let's be honest, is a similar framework for developing apps for the ipad... Arabica.., Colombian Supremo?

Fingers crossed...

Image: Apple Online Concierge