Daniel Eran Dilger about SproutCore, the framework behind SproutIt and now Apple’s MobileMe:

The company is now pushing Cocoa-inspired development outside of Mac OS X and the iPhone to a broader scope: the web. Apple has already demonstrated its ability to deliver rich web applications with the kind of direct interaction and offline state features normally associated with desktop apps in .Mac Web Gallery, which debuted last fall. After experimenting with a variety of JavaScript framework helper tools to do this, Apple put its resources behind SproutCore.

As Joel Spolsky said in his Strategy Letter:

So if history repeats itself, we can expect some standardization of Ajax user interfaces to happen in the same way we got Microsoft Windows. Somebody is going to write a compelling SDK that you can use to make powerful Ajax applications with common user interface elements that work together. And whichever SDK wins the most developer mindshare will have the same kind of competitive stronghold as Microsoft had with their Windows API.

Joel is right, it’s going to happen and Apple might be the leader.