just started to have a play with this - been awaiting for it before i started to learn flex - and from my initial plays it looks like the 'new visual basic' in terms of development ease. the eclipse interface i'm using (i've installed the apollo plugin to the flex builder) is a lot easier to use than REALbasic, although that does come with a database of dubious development quality, and anyone with an understanding of javascript and XML will quickly run with it. for web-enabled and simple desktop development its also looking superior to .net, but currently doesn't come close when dealing with more complex situations. that may change over time. i've not noticed an object factory for database access, and if one isn't forthcoming (this is the alpha, so its missing a few things like PDF support up to yet) it needs one. i've not played with any of M$'s XAML tools yet, and i'm going to be interested to see how they compare, but given M$ can't help themselves but bloat anything i'm not holding out hope for it beating apollo. adobe's no slouch in the bloatware department, given acrobat readers about as sleak as an elephant, but they seem to have taken on board some of macromedias nous. waiting for a couple of books to arrive before i really dive into this, but it's starting to look very good
