the Trojans helped by Apollo are defeated and Ajax dies at the end

According to the legend at least ;)
Apollo, the new runtime from Adobe was just brought to the public eyes.
Yesterday Ryan Stewart posted some screenshots from a recent workshop he attended. Although not really impressive they still look great. Of course the demo uses some cool Flex apps. One of those mimics iTunes and another uses Google Maps to make a SalesForce interface. The comments are worth reading definitely.
Today Adobe Consulting published a piece called "Technical Overview and 21 Questions". It should answer most of the questions that could pop in anyone's head regarding to the issue but until you catch a hands on session with the new tool you cannot feel completely satisfied. I know I can't.
It looks like it'll be an extended browser, more integrated with the OS. Will it be the final answer to RIAs on the desktop and the so called "occasionally connected" client. Could very well be.
The "We [Adobe] haven't announced the engine, but we will NOT be creating our own engine." statement regarding the html rendering engine (Gecko perhaps:) brings some assurance to me. Together with the "full standards support" one. Well Adobe is BIG so bringing Flash and Spry (the JS framework that incorporates XML data in the page without refresh) together inside a custom built runtime seems like a doable thing for them. Of course we'll have to swallow the Adobe Reader cookie in the process :P
But I think Apollo will be the answer to an easier duality in the presentation layer. The Flash/Flex or Ajax choice will be much easier to provide to the user.
If there were 22 questions the last one should be about native SWF support.
But packing the player with the runtime would be a big plus as well.