Why aren't there more (any?) killer RIA desktop apps?

Question

I am in the beginning stages of a project that will feature alot of graphing and visualization. Making this a RIA app makes all the sense in the world, until I start looking at examples of killer RIA apps, and find... basically none. I've investigated apps in all the major RIA platforms including AIR, Silverlight, FlashFX, and Laszlo and find that most sites that list example applications lead to many abandoned projects, dead links, or out-dated looking startups. And most of the community interest in these technologies seemed to peak in 2008 and then fallen off.

In terms of wide adoption and good design, the only successful app I could find was Balsamiq Mockups. And even that one I had some misgivings about the responsiveness of the GUI. Are there more out there that I'm missing?

So my basic question is why haven't RIA apps been a bigger success? Why has developer and community excitement over them died down? I see two basic problems, one is the installation process can be messier and feel less professional than native apps. But the biggest one is the lack of support for native controls which ends up making all of these apps feel flimsy and hackish.

The bottom line is I'm considering abandoning the thought of making a RIA altogether since I'm concerned that it's a kind of a kiss of death for a startup. The visualization and real time features would be a nice asset to my software, but I'm feeling like I'd be fighting a losing battle against consumer reactions to RIA.

Also I can't think of any tags that would bring in non RIA-specialists to this question, and fear that it might make the answers unbalanced in favor of RIAs. I'm not trying to start an argument over the validity of RIAs, but am just asking why adoption of these technologies has not been higher.

EDIT: and to clarify, when I say "killer app" I mean some app that basically defines a category and has a large base of very passionate users. When AJAX first reared it's head killer apps sprouted all over the place in many categories, and many startups were founded by the fast adoption of users to this technology. I just haven't seen anything remotely similar (in any category?) with RIA. Is there or has there ever been real buzz about an RIA app?

Answer 1

Tweetdeck is probably another good example of an Air based desktop app.

Answer 2

Ah, a valid question :)

Well, there's a few factors in play here. I'm a Flex developer myself and have been for about 3 years now. I've built many Flex and Air applications but most Air applications I've seen have mostly been used as an internal tool for a very large company, hence you will never see it.

The other thing is the pro/con of the whole Air platform. Air is a good idea IMO, but it's still slightly limited. The only reason I can think of using Air is for Mobile development, local data storage for offline working (and syncing), and maybe having a multi-screen application setup. Air is slightly limiting when it comes down to having native functionality, however it gains in portability.

There's also a performance issue. Flex/Air is not all that fast (compared to say C#) because it still needs to go through a virtual machine. It's never been all that good at crazy number crunching and doesn't have the ability to do threads (yet). When doing a web application, we normally offload those calculations on the server, but if you're doing a desktop client, you might want to do it locally using the available offline data. It's not impossible, but it won't be as fast.

And lastly, one of the main reason why I personally think Air doesn't catch on as much is mostly because of the lack of 'push' Adobe is putting on their developers. Microsoft is freaking nuts at pushing tech at developers; they're very involved. Adobe isn't as much. Heck, many people still don't know that you can use the same codebase and have a web app, desktop app and mobile app easily deployed between all of them.

These are all the reasons I can think of now and this are of a personal opinion from being a Flex developer for the past 3 years. When it comes to if you should use the technology or not, it always comes down to the requirements of the project and what technology fits it best.