Re:Ask HN: Is Desktop Software Dead?
by untog on Thursday December 15, 2011 @04:27PM
(#3358097)
You can erect the headstone when you can do everything in the cloud ... at 40,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific, without horrendous latency issues.
Well, not quite. I don't use any e-mail software any more- the Gmail web interface is better than most desktop clients I have ever used. With HTML5 it's possible to provide a version of Gmail that works entirely offline (they used to have one with Gears), so that would remove the latency issues.
In that respect, offline web apps could easily replace a lot of desktop apps. But once you have something that requires real processing power the web stuff fails. Native Client may change that, but you're still trapped within browser chrome.
Well, not quite. I don't use any e-mail software any more- the Gmail web interface is better than most desktop clients I have ever used. With HTML5 it's possible to provide a version of Gmail that works entirely offline (they used to have one with Gears), so that would remove the latency issues.
In that respect, offline web apps could easily replace a lot of desktop apps. But once you have something that requires real processing power the web stuff fails. Native Client may change that, but you're still trapped within browser chrome.