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I've had similar thoughts about WPF. It is an excellent technology but is so far a total no-show on the desktop. I just don't think Microsoft and Sun are doing enough to highlight the TRUE benefits of these technologies. Most of the examples you see are of spinning videos playing on spinning 3D spheres or something similar. Developers see that and reckon that they really don't need that kind of capability in their day to day work. They consider it foolish and dangerous. Yet they fail to see the true benefits of technologies like WPF and JavaFX. The technologies provide consistent interfaces across multiple DPI resolutions and rich content models previously found only in the web. So the true benefits go unrecognized while developers continue to struggle with higher DPI monitors in a bitmaped world and continue to spend large sums of money for more flexible grid controls and such because they need more compelling content presentation.

Stop showing us rotating spheres and 3D interfaces and start concentrating on marketing the true benefits of these technologies!

So finally reality is starting to set in. No sane developer would choose JavaFX over Flash. Even if JavaFX was 10 times better than Flash, it would have still had a hard time convincing developers to make that choice. What's surprises me is that developers like this author, didn't see this coming a mile away.

As former Sun Java Architect I'm quite sad about where the company is going. But, even in 2003 when I left, it was clear that Sun never will be an important part in front-end technologies. They are good at the server-side. But, they have no sense for what the client-side really needs. The debacle with Applets was a first hint. JavaFX is a next.

If you only compare what the technology delivers behind Flex it is pretty clear who will become the major player in Web 3.0: Adobe. They have PDF and now they have Flex. For me an excellent combination. It is amazing what you can reach with Flex in short time. None of the other technologies delivers such a quality in user experience with so little efforts.

But, Flex needs a big partner on the server-side: Spring. The Spring Source guys are working on a better integration (Spring-BlazeDS) than we already have with the examples of Christophe Coenraets:

http://blog.rainer.eschen.name/2008/07/02/flex-supports-spring-are-you-ready-to-skip-web-20/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/flex_java.html
http://www.springsource.org/spring-flex