But in practice it is much better than any alternative multi-platform instant software installation ecosystem. And in practice, it has led to a thriving ecosystem of applications, most of which can link to each other and will work on a large portion of users' devices.

Yes, absolutely true. But I can't help thinking that there must be a better way to achieve these goals than this mess we've made.

We're clearly in 'we should be amazed the pig dances at all' territory rather than in 'look how good the pig can dance'.

The better way would have been for the open source community to advance the Linux desktop in the way that OSX has been evolved - i.e. To gradually bring the advantages of the web back to the OS.

But if OSX has evolved that way... Why not just use OSX?

There are no other dancers; there are only pigs.

Giving data to third parties is a side effect of networked applications, not web apps specifically. Whether the client is in a browser or a stand-alone native app, if you give it data, it will pass that data back to the application servers.

I think it's both good and bad in theory and both good and bad in practice. Certainly most of the things you list are major downsides, but none of them keep the upside from being (IMO more) major.

I'm you're right that the experience is "almost always" sub-par. I would say "often", but not even "usually". I guess YMMV.

> I'm you're right that the experience is "almost always" sub-par. I would say "often", but not even "usually". I guess YMMV.

There aren't actually many fair/accurate comparisons around since most companies have either a shrink-wrapped product or a webapp. Rarely do you see both, and when there are I agree with jacquesm that the experience is almost always sub-par on the webapp [in comparison to the desktop app].

You can't really compare one company's webapp to another's non-webapp. i.e. you may feel GMail is better than Outlook, but since Google doesn't make a non-webapp version of GMail we don't know if that would be better than both Outlook and gmail.com. Microsoft does make a webapp version of Outlook, but I don't think many people find that better than "real" Outlook.

Google does in fact make a non-web version of Gmail. Gmail.app for iOS and the Android port of gmail. Both of which are a MUCH better experience them the comparable mobile web apps.

Apple's iWork suite is an example where someone is at least trying to make applications that run equally well within the browser, on mobile and on desktops.

> The theory is fantastic, but the practice leaves much to be desired

Ok... What is more fantastic for:

- large audiences?

- users who can't install/update software?

- " " can't/don't back up data?

- developers who don't have the resources to target multiple devices/platforms?

- integrations with other applications?

What's fantastic is your use of " on the Internet. First time I've seen that.

You mean you saw something new today? Now that's fantastic!

that the final experience is almost always sub-par.

I have a Gmail account and a work one that is on Thunderbird. Gmail's through the web is just overall better than Thunderbird and I usually get people to send work stuff to my Gmail account.

I hear these comments about giving precious data to third parties all the time.

But I don't hear many people talk about trying to improve it like some others are doing with remotestorage.io and byoFS or Mylar.