
Who Killed the Desktop Application? - danw
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000883.html
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tx
It's 2007 and smart people stopped separating "desktop" and "online"
applications a long time ago, because it is pointless: the best approach to
solving any problem is always picking the proper balance of server/desktop
horsepower/capabilities.

Desktops are very powerful. People forget (or never realize) how powerful
their computers are. For a long time only games have been taking advantage of
all those millions of transistors. I _really_ hope that next generation of
browsers will start moving towards that direction.

For instance: if you have a flash movie occupying 100% of the page, it becomes
simply unusable if a user maximizes the window, even on 1280x1024. Isn't that
ridiculous? At our age and time, a simple 2D vector graphics plays at pathetic
5-7 frames per second... (even if he's got a $700 video card) And something
tells me it's not entirely Macromedia/Adobe's fault.

It's changing, though. And Google/Microsoft are moving towards that direction.
Good (early) example can be iTunes or apps built on GoogleGear platform.

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mojuba
Good point.

And I think the number one killer of desktop applications is Microsoft,
however controversial it may seem at first.

It was Microsoft who convinced developers that a commercial application along
with its installation procedure must look and feel heavy, so that users feel
comfortable with the money they paid for it. The heavier the better. It is so
rare in the commercial desktop world that developers _strive_ for simplicity.

Without Google though, the Web world could have adopted the same complication
syndrome. Look at the MSDN web site, for example.

~~~
marketer
I don't think Microsoft had any part in convincing anyone that apps need heavy
installation procedures. It evolved as a generic way to do some basic things:
moving the executable to a place the user wants, and setting up some registry
values. Isn't that a reasonable solution for desktop applications?

There is nothing wrong with the MSDN site. When you're storing millions of
pages of documentation, things may get a little bloated. If you need to look
up anything about the Windows APIs, or any information about .NET languages,
you'll quickly see that MSDN does the job well.

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mojuba
One more point: you can set your registry values when your application runs
for the first time. It's a common practice especially on UNIX and MacOS to
generate configuration silently, when needed instead of focusing user's
attention on that during installation.

Other than that, installation is essentially copying. The proper place, file-
type bindings, version checks etc can be done by the system automatically,
again, without annoying the user (and the developer, too). And that's exactly
what MacOS was doing since version 5 in 1980's.

(Besides, Windows Registry is one of the main sources of complication).

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tx
And, just to disagree with author, I'd recommend comparing Google's Picasa to
itself.

That would be a fair comparison, because it is virtually the same application,
with same set of features, done with online/offline UI's... slowly merging
together.

BTW: as far as PC "desktop" software is concerned, Picasa is probably my
favorite application. Even though I don't use it that much, but as an engineer
concerned with usability, I always try to point our "desktop people"'s
attention at it.

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danw
Picasa is great, the only reason I still have a windows PC.

~~~
brlewis
What makes it so much better than, say, picturesync?

