Google boss shows off iPhone

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...the ultimate cross-platform client/server architecture...

You should be writing commercials for those multimillion dollar development projects ? you make it sound just super!

Well, this past weekend I had the opportunity to use Google Docs to edit modestly sized <ocument. While it?s never been especially fast, this weekend it came to a crawl trying to format tables of textual data. Perhaps just too many people were trying to use the service at the same time I was? Never-the-less, another example of why webapps aren?t all you crack them up to be. Sorry!

They are a good idea, but ultimately only a niche in the spectrum of software solutions. For some applications, like map generation, they?re the absolute best approach. But, frankly, for others, both the aspects of speed and security are going to limit their potential.

People shell out their money to by ever more powerful desktops, not just to run browsers, but to run applications ? applications which they tend to like to have installed on their local machine. And, people like to have their data/work product stored locally, under their own control, as well.

I can remember back to the unix workstation/X-windows heyday when multi-user access collaborative applications were previously touted as the wave of the future (even got to test out a multi-user whiteboard app from HP). I theory, it was a great idea. But, in the real world, for the most part, individuals DID NOT want to work simultaneously in a collaborative environment. They much preferred to do their own thing, even though merging all the parts that they individually worked on into a cohesive final product would take much longer to do than if they had been willing to work together. It just must be something about human nature.

In the end, I do not disagree with you that there are some truly great applications which can be delivered as webapps, but I do not agree with the previous poster who claims that they are the future of desktop computing. Cheap RAM, multi-Ghz processors, and massive disk drives effectively mask even the most bloated of desktop apps (ie Office), thus reducing the draw for end-users to want to do in their browser what they can do faster and more safely on their own machine. And, even if they don?t want to shell out the bucks for something like MS Office, OpenOffice does 95% of the same thing for no more than the small effort to download and install it. High functioning open-source freeware is just one more competitor for webapps to contend with.

Posted by: slwerner   Posted on: 06/25/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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