Can Web Apps Ever Truly Replace Desktop Apps?

tooger writes "Matt Hartley from MadPenguin.org opines that web apps can never replace desktop applications, for a variety of reasons. He writes, 'Some of you may point out that the data stored on your hard drive is not of any real consequence, but I would disagree. It is more than probable that a skilled, disgruntled employee of the company you trust with your data could ... sell off your personal information.' Given the real danger of privacy concerns, identity theft, and uptime, will web-based applications ever truly replace locally hosted software?"

Comments

Re:foolish proposition anyway

[hab136]

Keep in mind that some huge fraction of Americans never intend to get an Internet connection.

I would imagine that the cross-section of computer owners and people who are not online is fairly small.

And how would you like it if your C++ compiler or GIMP or Photoshop or 3D Studio Max was a web application? Has anybody thought it through? It's not even a matter of security, just plain utility.

I'd love it.

The service provider is running the app on their huge CPU farms - the browser is just the UI to it. Think of Citrix, VNC, Microsoft Remote Desktop, or any of the other thin-client implementations, except we're using HTML, XML, and Javascript for the UI instead of a binary protocol. Either way, the C++ compiles and image transforms all happen on the remote end.

Think of Photoshop - all the UI needs is to send off coordinates and commands to apply, and receive back image previews and status. If you're working on some huge 6000x6000 94 MB image, but your local browser window is only 1024x768, then the most the app has to send is a 1024x768 bitmap.

3D is probably not a candidate due to the constant refresh and the latencies involved. Games ditto.

But most applications consist of:

1. select a subset of data
2. select a command to apply to that subset of data
3. get result

AJAX is fine for that model.