
What desktop apps do you use? - danw

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nostrademons
Firefox, Thunderbird (occasionally), Winamp, Gaim, uTorrent, Winzip, Acrobat,
Ghostview, VMWare, SSH. Netbeans when I need to do work stuff, and IE for
testing browser compatibility. MSPaint for quick graphic edits, and Notepad++
for quick text edits. Occasionally Civ3 or SimCity 2000 when I feel like
playing a game, and the DVD burning software that came with the machine.
Nothing else.

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danw
With web apps increasingly taking over from desktop, which desktops apps do
you still use?

As a starter my mac os x dock has Firefox, Mail, Terminal, iCal, TextWrangler,
Adium, NicePlayer & Democracy. Everything else has been slowly replaced by web
apps. Which app will go online next?

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dfranke
On Linux: Firefox, mutt, emacs, xchat, gaim, amarok, skype, gimp, LaTeX,
Mathematica, VMWare.

On 'doze: Firefox, Visual Studio, Quicken, OpenOffice.

The only one of these that I'd like to replace with a web app is Quicken.
Buxfer looks promising but it's not nearly there yet.

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tx
\------ Work ------

Eclipse, Visual Studio, Photoshop, WordPad, FireFox

\------ Fun -------

Picasa, Excel, Quicken, RAW Shooter Essentials, Bibble.

The only "online application" I use is gmail :) So much for "everything is
moving to the Web" hype.

~~~
nostrademons
Or it could be that other people have moved to the web sooner than you have.
;-) Most of the planning and early design work was done over Google Docs &
Spreadsheets, Google Groups, and Skype. (We mostly moved to AIM/phone/going to
each others houses when we dropped from 5 founders to 2.) FictionAlley.org has
a staff of close to 200, all managed through Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger.
Even at work, I often find myself communicating over AIM with my cubemates.
And I talk to my boss over AIM a lot more than in person, since he's on the
other end of the building.

~~~
tx
No kidding. :)

Is this thread about working or talking? Surely it's hard to collaborate with
people using desktop applications without an internet connection.

The point I was trying to make is that "death of desktop" is a myth. A new
buzzword, invented to get more PR for whoever is NOT developing "desktop
software".

While harsh reality is that there are _applications_ and there are _web
applications_. And we all _make our money_ using "desktop" software every day.
Moreover, lately it become accepted (and even hot) not to pay for it (apache,
mongrel, linux, eclipse, ruby interpreter, PHP, photoshop, firefox, internet
explorer, even freakin BIOS). And proclaiming it "dead", while being 110%
dependant on it, is at least superficial.

And if you ask people why they build web apps, the answer will not be "because
desktop is dead", but probably (if they are being honest) because regular
software takes a lot more skill, more learning time, more development time and
frankly it's just not as "sexy" these days. Sexy or not, it surely is not
dead.

We depend on "desktop" so much that people often pay for it, while "web
software" is almost never considered valuable enough to get people to open
their wallets for. To me that's pretty pathetic: not to be able to charge for
what you've built, and becoming yet another semi-useful parasite sitting on
AdSense wellfare.

~~~
SwellJoe
Oh, yeah, you're also wrong. The desktop is dead. It, and apparently you, just
don't know it yet.

Sure, it'll be years before everything we do happens on the network...but not
many years. It's just too damned convenient to have it floating in the cloud,
accessible wherever you happen to be and with whatever devices you have handy.

~~~
hello_moto
Not quite actually.

Take 37signals app. I can't use it for work related because that would
resulted in me storing the confidential work related items under their server.
Work also takes much of your time.

Another example would be to store Word docs in Google. One slip-up and your
word docs is searchable by Google.

So no, the desktop isn't dead yet.

In fact, I only use websites to read news and forums.

~~~
SwellJoe
Sure, you don't know it's dead yet, either. ;-)

Privacy awareness and assurance will come to these services. Most small
businesses already outsource email...that's as "confidential" as most
businesses get.

I already know dozens of people that use gmail for everything (business and
personal). It's not a large gap between that and presentations, spreadsheets,
etc.

And, of course, "web" doesn't just mean "running at Google". There are
numerous installable products that aren't desktop apps, but keep data within
an organization.

"In fact, I only use websites to read news and forums."

This merely exhibits your own bias, not the coming reality. Sure, it'll be
years, as I mentioned. But it's definitely coming. The convenience, higher
efficiency (both for the provider and the consumer), and faster pace of
innovation will win in the end. Someone else mentioned that desktop software
is harder and that web apps can be developed by hacks...while that isn't
entirely true (the apps we're generally willing to rely on were developed by
seriously good developers regardless of whether it's desktop or web-based),
it's another reason for web apps to win. More developers equals more apps for
more specialized needs. Just like DSLs are the best way to solve many
programming problems, custom apps are the best way to solve many software
problems...with more developers more custom apps can flourish. And if you have
a choice between a poorly fitting desktop app, or an ideally fitting web app
designed exactly for your business and industry, you'll choose the web app.
Again, I don't know that it's really true--all software is hard, when it comes
to making it ready for the masses.

Anyway, denial is a part of the seven stages of grief. For those grieving the
death of the desktop, you've probably got a couple of stages to go, and that's
alright. ;-)

~~~
tx
Joe, why do you want "desktop to die" so desperately? I have really tried to
get your point, but all I see is a marketing pitch: _"pace of innovation... it
will be years... higher efficiency..."_ Come on, this is not a business school
restroom. Be specific please.

Reality is that there are always 3 big components to any _software_ : code,
data and runtime. You can download/cache any of the 3, in different
proportions.

Now define "online app". Is it something that downloads all 3 components?
Nope, since runtime is always local (browser/flash/silverlight).

My original point is that it makes alot of sense to push as much code down to
customer's computer as possible, distributing the load (because it simply
makes sense). The runtime will always sit at consumer's computer, because
runtimes are fat, ugly and a paint to install securely.

So... basicaly it all comes to where you want to store your data.

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abstractbill
I use emacs, firefox, iterm and itunes.

I sometimes think about getting rid of iterm, but never seem to be able to
find an emacs terminal mode that does full ansi support perfectly.

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darose
The ones I use the most are:

firefox, gaim/pidgin, rdesktop, eclipse, konsole, thunderbird, konqueror (as
file manager, not browser), kedit, audacious, squirrel sql

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brianmckenzie
Firefox, TextMate, Terminal, OpenOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, iTunes, iChat, Pro
Tools LE

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myoung8
Mail.app [1], iCal, AddressBook, Safari, FF, Skype, iTunes, iChat, iPhoto,
Preview, Excel, Word, PPT, Photoshop

[1] You probably just shat a brick, but I like mail on my desktop...

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jim-in-austin
firefox, filezilla, puTTY, notepad++, nvu, itunes, irfanview, truecrypt,
csved, calc (not what you think), excel and... nethack!

~~~
jim-in-austin
calc = <http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc/> csved =
<http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/index.html>

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staunch
gkrellm, gnome-terminal, firefox, gvim, gaim, xchat, thunderbird, xine,
mplayer, inkscape, gimp.

Linux with WindowMaker.

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entelarust
safari, firefox, textmate, transmit, photoshop cs3, adium, transmission,
netnewswire, itunes, syncrosvn

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omouse
firefox, opera, safari, emacs, sonata, mpd, ncmpc, openoffice, gimp, inkscape,
mirage, frostwire, gftp

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thisisnotmyname
gvim, cygwin, firefox, open office, the gimp, visual studio, mysql, sql server
express, itunes, aim

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larkin
BTW, why do you want to know that? :)

~~~
danw
To know which web apps need building next! If a lot of people are still using
a desktop app when it can be made a web apps you've got to wonder why..

~~~
ktus
In that case, then how about a web version of emacs.

~~~
ryantmulligan
There already is one. It's called 9ne

<http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/>

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twism
itunes, eclipse, gtalk, paint.NET, NaviCat, WinSCP, Putty, Windows Task
Manager.

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davidw
emacs, rxvt, firefox, openoffice covers most of it.

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mynameishere
I don't think we're being honest here. I use 5-6 different media players
alone. Most of you seem to be boning up on your nerd credentials, because I
don't see too many mentions of Doom or Quake, or MSFT Office, or Notepad, or
IM clients, or Winzip/winrar, etc. The most popular dev environment seems to
be Emacs. This tells me that your favorite language is still in diapers. I
develop 10x faster in Eclipse than I ever could in Emacs. (I used emacs for a
year coding C--it's okay, but its whole 'culture' harkens back to 300 baud
modems.)

Some things that seem non-desktop, like Flash, really are in a sense--the
connection to the browser and the web is very weak.

