

Have we reached the end of desktop OS development? - blhack
http://www.gibsonandlily.com/blogs/81

======
stcredzero
Nope. Shortsighted. A better analogy might be "hi-fi" audio. We reached a
level of audio quality that the majority of people are basically happy with
some decades ago. (I'm talking about amplification and transduction here.)
What "progress" we've made in the meantime that hasn't had to do with new
formats (both in the sense of media/input format and output format) has had
mostly to do with making sound amplification and transduction more
_convenient_. So big stacks of components are now tending to disappear into
convenient all-in-one forms. A very high-level diagram of this progression
could be:

    
    
        Innovation -> Optimization -> Standardization -> Convenience
    

With audio, standardization was instrumental in optimization. Since one could
swap-out their crappy amplifier for a better one, standardization enabled
competition in audio components. So perhaps these are better represented as
happening together.

In the convenience phase, standardization doesn't go away. It just becomes
invisible to the end user.

Seen this way, it's obvious that there's a _lot_ of desktop development left
to do, even if OS are already seen as commodity, just like audio equipment
became commodity decades ago, but still came in rather inconvenient forms. A
lot of the desktop experience is still quite far from being completely
seamless. Users still have to be aware that one program does their IMs,
another does stuff on the web. Yet another might be used to publish their
blog. Another one lets them read PDFs. Another lets them edit their photos.
It's just like the 80s and 90s when a lot of people still had to puzzle over
the manuals and plug dozens of cords to hook up the 4 or 5 components of their
home theater. (Instead of buying some all-in-one thing and just plugging in 6.
Soon, it may get to the point where no one plugs in anything at all on their
home theater, except to power outlets.)

~~~
blhack
I'll agree. That was sortof the point of the last paragraph...

Right now (to use your analogy), Microsoft is trying to sell us bigger and
better pre-amps while everybody is buying all-in-wonder digital systems.

Everything is getting smaller (netbooks, smartphones like the iPhone and the
Android), but Microsoft is about to release another OS with a HUGE hardware
investment required in order to even run it. (edit: I was totally wrong about
this. The hardware requirement for windows 7 can be seen here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#Hardware_requirements> and is rather
minimal).

I was wrong to say "the end of desktop development"...more the end of an _era_
or desktop OS development. Microsoft doesn't seem to get this (yet).

~~~
lawn
"HUGE hardware investment required in order to even run it."

With win 7 that's not really the case, it runs pretty well even on older
computers.

------
greyman
Answer: No, we didn't.

In my opinion, the desktop apps are still needed, and part of the future will
be applications like Evernote, where your data are on the cloud and online
version is available, but there are also native rich clients for various
platform, like mobile phones, or, well, desktop.

Basically, for every application where I produce my own data and use it often,
I welcome having both the online version and a desktop client. Even if the
desktop client is only a bit quicker, it add ups over time.

For example, people are bragging how Google Docs does it for them, but I use
desktop Office software, and then sync my files using the cloud with Live
Mesh. Simply, the desktop client is still more convenient, and the "syncing"
element can be solved outside the client.

In the next year when Microsoft Office will be integrated with cloud, there
will be both desktop software AND online version available. That I think is
the future, and the desktop apps will be a part of that.

------
brianobush
A comment to the dvd/blueray and modern technology: my kids prefer VHS tapes
to DVDs since they know DVDs get scratched and have never had problems with
VHS tapes. Of course they are only 4,6 and 8, but still they see the problems
with modern technology that I have just ignored or just carefully avoided.

~~~
moe
Ehm. Whatever problems you may have with DVDs. Compared to VHS they are
superior in every regard.

~~~
mynameishere
I find DVDs incredibly annoying, and never could use them. Mainly because I
was so used to the ability to remove VHS tapes, put them aside, and re-play
them from the exact position with zero wait time. That's fixable on DVDs (I
imagine) but not on my player.

DVD FBI warnings, animations, menus, etc, are all pointless and (usually)
unavoidable.

The weird thing about DVDs was the ENORMOUS marketing push for them when they
came out. The industry was desperate to transition to this medium, for clear
reasons:

1\. To get everyone to re-buy their favorite movies.

2\. Better copy protection.

3\. Cheaper production.

There was very little for the consumer, but he fell for it. By contrast, the
ancient (late 1970s) analogue Laserdiscs were genuinely better than anything
else, but didn't work out.

~~~
garply
Really? I can't carry around a VHS in my laptop bag and watch the VHS in my
laptop whenever I want it. So, from my perspective, as someone who's never
owned a TV other than his computer, VHSes are almost completely useless. Of
course, a usb flash drive is much preferable to a DVD...

~~~
mynameishere
Your comment is unrelated to mine. I am speaking in the context of home
viewership. This is frankly quite obvious, but whatever.

------
mrshoe
I agree that desktop OS vendors are out of touch with their users and that the
browser is the most important app on your computer (for some people it's
basically the _only_ app). However, how can that possibly mean "the end of
desktop OS development"? To me, that says that there is a ton of room for
future OS development.

"Native apps" still get a lot more support from desktop OSes than web apps. If
web apps are taking over, this needs to change. In fact, the distinction
between native apps and web apps needs to disappear. All apps will involve
some amount of client-side data/computation and some amount of server-side.
The OS needs to change to acknowledge that.

There's _plenty_ of desktop OS development left for the future.

------
ezy
The "cloud" isn't fast enough.

Until most _everyone_ can access files in the cloud as fast as a local NFS
connection over 1G ethernet, and do so _consistently_ , desktop apps are here
to stay. I view the suggestion that web based photo management apps and
editors are(will be) "just as good" as their desktop counterparts for
"ordinary" folks with the same suspicion that I view the claims that GIMP is
just as good as photoshop or OpenOffice is a suitable replacement for
Word/Excel. Not likely...

------
sreitshamer
I think the desktop is critical as a system-integration point for users. I
find it hard to integrate the silos of web apps, but on my desktop I can drag-
and-drop from one app to another. At least on the Mac, many desktop apps are
really good at integrating with the OS, which means they integrate well with
each other.

------
pohl
The idea of buying an entire half hour of The Family Guy to promote the launch
of Windows 7 is interesting.

But imagine the remixes.

------
ynniv
If you read HN, you already wrote this in blog post years ago.

Probably without using periods for whitespace.

~~~
blhack
The point was the Microsoft is releasing what is going to be another failure
due to their ignorance about what people are using their computers for. Have
you heard the ads? "I created a photo album on windows 7!" Did you? Are you
sure you didn't just upload 100 photos to facebook and tag your family members
in them?

Also, the periods for whitespaces are because of the way that markdown (which
is what the site uses) deals with newlines.

------
shimi
A browser is a desktop application

