Desktop RIAs & digital footptints

Since the big news of this afternoon seems to be the release of an Apollo-driven YourMinis desktop RIA, I did some snooping and wanted to see the footprint left by Apollo desktop apps. So I downloaded YourMini's 211K .AIR file, which being cross-platform, works on a Mac or Windows box. Contrast this against some of the early desktop news readers running WPF and the system demands (typically either WinXP with SP2, 500MB RAM recommended, the .NET Framework 3.0; or Vista).

Specifically, Forbes' impressive app requires an initial 1.4MB MSI download. I like both approaches, specifically Adobe's, being an easily distributable package, consistent with Flash. There's a slight wait, but nothing too unconscionable.