Intelligent Enterprise

The Apple rumor mills, always busy grinding out compote, turned their attention to SproutCore in mid-June. SproutCore is Apple's almost-official JavaScript framework of choice for developing Rich Internet Applications. The open source creation of Charles Jolley at SproutIt, SproutCore has an independent Web site, and it's affiliation with Apple is hardly a well guarded secret; but its further delineation under non-disclosure at the Worldwide Developer's Conference set off a buzz.

It's long been known that Apple (that is Steve Jobs) doesn't want to work with Adobe Flash to develop Apple's RIAs, and that Apple was searching for alternatives in the Ajax/JavaScript camps. SproutCore is a JavaScript framework, one of scores, in part distinguished by being modeled after Apple's Cocoa development environment. SproutCore code executes completely within a browser (most browsers anyway), although Apple has already needed to hitch the SquirrelFish JavaScript Interpreter to its Safari browser to boost performance.

The desire to create RIA/Web 2.0 without Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight or any proprietary graphics engine plug-in is understandable; but life in the fast RIA lane is not simple. Many of the popular RIA effects, for example animation, require a considerable amount of graphics horsepower — typically more than can be provided by a simple browser-JavaScript combination. Which is why, when they get serious about providing a full-range of media effects up to and including streaming video, companies turn to a dedicated and more or less proprietary graphics engine like Flash. Whether SquirrelFish will do the trick for Apple RIA remains to be seen.

Which leads to another rumor that Apple is seriously contemplating positioning QuickTime (in a future release of QuickTime X), as the next entry into the graphics engine sweepstakes. Why? Apple's awfully late to the game (like a decade). Adobe has the big margin in numbers of distributed clients, with both Microsoft and Sun already in the queue.

Also, graphics plug-ins can be exceedingly tricky to produce. The goal is to stuff an impossible amount of capability into an impossibly small memory space: Graphics engine, language interpreter (JavaScript or other), application management, communications (typically a messaging system) — among other things. And while you're at it, make it secure, multiple OS compatible, and above all endow it with top performance. Since most of these capabilities involve trade-offs, it's no wonder that, like Flash, over the years efficacy zigs and zags. Products like these can seriously stumble on minimal shocks to quality and reputation. Why would Apple risk an entry?

Well, Apple is Apple; [snark warning] insanely great can trump anything. Besides, the stakes are high; RIA is arguably one of the keys to the future of computing. How could Apple not be part of it? The question is how Apple will approach RIA. Will SproutCore + SquirrelFish work well enough? What about running in other browsers? Or the other requirements for managing Web 2.0 applications? Considering it's still in the rumor stage, how long will Apple have to cook up its best shot?