The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise

Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by rpedela on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @01:49AM (#7055757)

Yeah I generally agree with you. My view is that mobile will follow the desktop in terms of apps. Once upon a time, most apps were native to the desktop. Then the networks got fast enough and the browsers and tools got good enough that you could build most native desktop apps as websites. Once the mobile networks get fast enough, and the mobile browsers and tools get a bit better then I think you will start seeing mobile apps being built as websites too.

The main problem websites solve over native is the fact you only have to build the app once and it works everywhere (mostly). Of course, there will always be a place for native apps, regardless of desktop or mobile, when performance matters most.

I think you are already starting to see it happen actually with mobile-first web frameworks like Bootstrap, some mobile browsers performing well (i.e. Chrome), and 4G rolling out. But it is definitely just starting assuming I am right.

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Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by waps on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @05:53AM (#7056344)

Which apps exactly, aside from shopping and maybe encyclopaedias, have migrated to the web ?

Desktop publishing ? Nope

IDEs ? Nope

CAD ? Nope

3D modeling ? Nope

Mathematical tools ? Nope

So which ones ?

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Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by bryanlarsen on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @06:10AM (#7056385)

Desktop publishing: do people still use dedicated apps for that anymore? AFAIK, people just use Word, which is steadily losing share to Google Docs.

IDEs? here's 13 of them: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/cloud-ide-developers/

CAD? tinkercad, etc. This one is a classic Christofferson innovator's dilemna. Cloud CAD is the obvious way of doing 3D printing, which can & will move up to eat the big guys.

3D modelling? Clara.io, Lagoa

Mathematical Tools? Good question. A quick google found this, http://www.ms.uky.edu/~statweb/ which is 14 years old... I'm sure if I had a better idea of what to google for, I could find something better...

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Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by blueskin_ on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @08:46AM (#7056955)

How many of those services are any good though?

Most likely none.

How many work without an active low-latency internet connection?

Again, most likely none.

How many lock you in to their service?

Probably not all, but I'd seriously doubt "none".

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Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by bryanlarsen on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @09:01AM (#7057034)

All of them are "good enough" for some users, and have compelling use cases. They aren't feature complete, but they all have small niches where their online nature gives them a compelling advantage over their offline counterparts. From this small niche they can grow "innovator's dilemma" style to be competitive with their desktop competitors.

Google Docs is the most obvious example of this -- I don't know anybody who uses Microsoft Word anymore. Obviously I'm in a little bit of a bubble that way, but they've certainly got a large enough user base to grow from.

Google Docs works while offline, and the same techniques could work on the competitors I mentioned.

In terms of lock-in, all of the services I listed are in the "underdog" phase of growth, where lock-in does more harm than good -- a good interop story with their competitors is more important than the benefits of lock-in. Of course, if they ever reach dominant status this might change, but at the moment, all of the ones I'm familiar with have good & prominent import & export options.

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Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by blueskin_ on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @09:05AM (#7057054)

I use LibreOffice, and most people at work use either that or MS Word. At home, it's a mix of LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

My old job used to use Google Docs, but I always felt like I was working against it rather than with it, and I know I wasn't the only one - still a lot of .docx, xlsx, odt, etc being sent around and on fileshares despite the policy being to hand over sensitive company data to google.

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Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by TheCoelacanth on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @10:31AM (#7057519)

You're only looking at highly specialized apps which require a complex UI, so they tend to be more resistant to moving to the web. For the vast majority of apps, which you are ignoring, the UI is just a bunch of forms to fill in. New development of that type of app has almost completely moved to the web.

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Re:The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise by nailer on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @07:19AM (#7056593)

As well as those mentioned by the other reply:

- Email

- Instant messaging

- Media playing

- Accounting

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