This is what I’ve been waiting for! The thing is I’m kind of spoilt with the incredible power of neko, haXe and SWHX our stripped version of Apollo.

Stripped because we don’t have an HTML renderer. (Yet, :)) )

What we have is an extension mechanism via Neko. Practically, we can use every C/C libraries via neko. Image Manipulation, MySQL, SQLite Databases, Game Engines, you name it.

Do you think Adobe will add such a mechanism to the runtime? In the FAQ they say “we are considering the feasibility of it”.

Yes, you can bundle the runtime with your application into a single, platform-specific application. Note the platform-specific bit. The trade-off is that the runtime is necessarily platform-specific and thus you’ll need to distribute separate installers for supported platforms (currently Windows and OS X and also Linux, post 1.0). Instead, if you distribute your application as an .air file, it’s a single, cross-platform application.

The great thing about this is that initially, before the Apollo runtime has a high-level penetration, you can be guaranteed that your application will run without requiring a separate download for the user. I see people using this quite a bit. Once the Apollo runtime has ubiquitous penetration I’m sure we’ll see more applications being distributed as .air files.

Hope that answers your question :)

So in order for clients to use our Apollo apps, we have to get them to install Apollo, AND then our app?

I hope there’s an easy way to allow potential users to download one file, which installs Apollo AND then our app with one installer.

Any idea if Apollo has looked at something for that Aral?