Interesting reaction. I think it is possible to create beautiful interfaces in AIR (I'll leave it up to you to decide if we've accomplished it or not). I haven't heard many people complain about TweetDeck's desktop UI. Realistically AIR represents trade-offs. On the downside you have to install AIR with the software, but it also gives users the ability to run it on any OS from day one.
The development overhead of maintaining separate code for each OS is too great which is why there are essentially no task management tools that cross platforms. I'd like to think that the ability to run on any platform brings considerable value to our users. For those of us that use both Mac and PC everyday, this is something we could never do with Things or OmniFocus.
Give it a second look. It may be worth rethinking the value of AIR.
Agreed in general for stock controls, but stock controls are hardly the stuff of "beautiful interfaces," regardless of the platform. Making something look good consistently across platforms is difficult without using some kind of intermediary (I'll assert that your web browser, in this respect, is just such an intermediary).
Did you look at the screenshots or the actual app, though? Visually, it's clear these people have put a ton of work into making the interface gorgeous, well beyond the "pretty wallpaper" that so many of these apps are touting these days. And they do sync?!! And I can use it on my PC at work? And in offline "airplane mode" too? Sounds like a great choice IMO.
The development overhead of maintaining separate code for each OS is too great which is why there are essentially no task management tools that cross platforms. I'd like to think that the ability to run on any platform brings considerable value to our users. For those of us that use both Mac and PC everyday, this is something we could never do with Things or OmniFocus.
Give it a second look. It may be worth rethinking the value of AIR.