

Are Desktop Applications Dying? - rgeorge28
http://saucelabs.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/are-desktop-applications-dying/

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Qz
Seem like a promo for SproutCore more than anything substantive about the
'death' of desktop applications.

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boucher
And a pretty misleading one at that.

"The iPad team worked with the SproutCore team to provide native hardware
acceleration to the JavaScript layer..."

Yeah, that couldn't be further from the truth. MobileWebKit has had hardware
accelerated 3D transforms since before SproutCore existed. And that's the only
part of the entire equation that is hardware accelerated. Plus, you can also
do it at the Obj-C level, it's not something unique to MobileWebKit.

For many things, JavaScript on these mobile devices is fast enough. But let's
not pretend it compares to native app performance. It is, in fact, 50-100x
slower. It just turns out that in a lot of cases you don't really need that
speed (which is true in lots of environments -- look at ruby).

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krschultz
So he picks two examples where they implemented hardware acceleration for web
apps on a single device as an example where web apps are superior, and
extropates that to desktop apps are dieing.

Desktop utility and shareware apps are dieing. Why use a TO-DO list on your
computer when there is remember the milk? Email I can see a good reason for it
being in the cloud. Is Photoshop going to be replaced? AutoCAD? 3D Studio?
Even MS Office?

No.

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neuromancer2600
I was also pretty disappointed about the reasoning. This blog post sums up
what I am thinking: <http://bit.ly/dkpQh1>

In short: it's both the eco system, the low learning curve, the penetration of
the internet, and the ability to gain more insights into what people are doing
with your app that native apps will have a hard time competing with.

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demallien
Yeah, no.

There is not one single example of an application which has both a webapp
version and a desktop version, where I prefer the webapp version. Not one. The
closet I could come to that was preferring the real Facebook site to their
iPhone app. But even there, on the _iPhone_ , I prefer the app to the website.

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jheriko
Its a shame the article is so lacking in content... this is an interesting
subject.

