On app stores, general suckage of 'cloud' apps, and the desktop dying

[urlwolf]

Key post

Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform. There will forever be other important platforms competing for users' time. To thrive, HTML and company need what those other platforms have: a single source repository and a good owner to drive it. A standards body is not suited to perform this role. Browser vendors are innovating in some areas, but they are stalled by the standards process in so many areas that is impossible to create a platform with a coherent, unified vision the way Apple has with Cocoa or the way Python has with Guido.

This is a very lucid analysis on app stores, general suckage of 'cloud' apps, and the desktop dying. And it agrees with the overall sentiment of many DC'ers: webapps do not match desktop apps or native phone apps, no matter how hard they try. But people writing desktop apps are being asphyxiated, they are hard to monetize, and they are perceived as dinosaurs.

[40hz]

From the same article by Joe Hewitt:

Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform. There will forever be other important platforms competing for users' time.

I wish I could offer solutions, but I have none. I know where we need to go, but not how to get there.

Posts like Joe Hewitt's drive me crazy at times.

With all due respect, Joe offers neither a solution nor a viable argument for the point he's attempting to make. He makes statements that assert 'facts' and 'truths' rather than establishing them.

And he falls into a diatribe popular with some software developers. That's the one that says: The world would be a far better place - if only all the standards bodies could go away, and allow  Men of Genius to boldly lead it into a bright collective future based on their personal vision.

Hmm...that does sound a lot like Steve Jobs, doesn't it? 

I wonder if Joe works for Apple? 

[zridling]

Hilarious, given that there would be no web without STANDARDS -- hey, just make up your own kooky version of HTML, everybody!
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The trend is set, though. Unless you're a developer or a content creator, your computing experience is dominated by the web, i.e., the browser. I don't need to buy it, license it, validate it, or pirate it. It's everywhere. And as long as you don't mind it spying on you 24/7....

[40hz]

Unless you're a developer or a content creator, your computing experience is dominated by the web, i.e., the browser. I don't need to buy it, license it, validate it, or pirate it. It's everywhere. And as long as you don't mind it spying on you 24/7....

Amen. Truer words were never spoken.    

With all the power grabbing that's going on with the Internet, maybe it's time for the Othernet to make a comeback?

Can you say: "Heeeeere Fidonet!"?

[attach]

[mahesh2k]

My few cents on this topic.


Desktop and Laptop Market is for -

1) Education, research and development
2) Audio, Video and other media development
3) Commercial and non-commercial software development
4) Web
5) Offline data management
6) Faster computing
7) Office and other routine tasks
8. online shopping
9) Books and other publishing media
10) Gaming - web dependent and non-web dependent
and many more...

You can see that desktop and laptop market perform - creation, consume and sharing of the data. It's not stuck on any one particular task. This platform makes use of powerful processor be it core or graphics. Laptops are yet to catch up with the processing speed of bigger machines and in some cases not even desktop cores but still they're offering almost everything that desktop can offer.

Tablet market is for -

1) Browsing the internet, emails, watching videos
2) Online shopping
3) Book (read)
4) Phone ?
5) Art (draw/photography)
etc.

As you can see tablet market is for those who consume and limited data creation possibility. So basically tablet users have more limitations on data manipulation. Sure they can use external keyboard and mouse to some extent. But tablet processors are not yet matured enough to disturb any of the desktop or laptop platform. You can watch youtube video or do skype on tablet but you can't do encoding of the video on your tablet. Arm processors are not fast enough to manage that. Similarly you can't use tablets for development activity with these processors as of now. One more point is about broken code and fixing thee same on tablets. You can't fix many issues of your browser or OS on your tablet if you have no external keyboard and mouse or access to another machine. Tablets are also limited with storage for now. AFAIK, there is no tablet with 1TB storage, you have to depend on external drive.

One important point most of the tablet users are forgetting before making comments like -"deskptop is dead already and you're living in cave with dekstops", that screen size is very important. Today we have screens which have ports to get input from deskop. But considering the amount of processing it needs for data manipulation tablets are not ready for handling big screens (they're not mac mini yet). I don't know if tablets can give you feel for HD and 3D movies like big screens.

As for cloud apps - If you want someone else to take care of your family pictures, videos and purchased mp3s then you have nothing to do on desktop/laptop. You should migrate to tablets to save money. But if you've privacy and data loss/tampering concerns then cloud has nothing to offer you.

Yeah, 2++ cents.  

[zridling]

Good points mahesh. PCs are for production (and anything else), whereas gadgets like phones and tablets are mostly content consumption devices.
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@40hz:
I wish. I might be wrong, but I think that's why Reddit will outlast them all -- efficient simplicity.

[Renegade]

Interesting:

http://joehewitt.com/post/what-the-web-is-and-is-not/

The Web is not HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It's not DOM, SVG, WebGL, PNG, or Flash. The Web is really just HTTP over TCP/IP. What gets transported over HTTP does not define the Web.

...

So, my definition of the Web then is resources loaded over the Internet using HTTP and then displayed in a hyperlink-capable client.