If the developer of a particular application has the budget to make it for only one target platform, the dichotomy is true. And the web with client-side script has greater user base reach than any single native desktop platform.
In this comment, FunkSoulBrother wrote that PC games aren't designed for a living room experience "Because no one does that. [...] I'd be shocked if there were 150,000 Home Theater PCs properly installed and powerful enough for gaming on the continent."
In this comment, kamapuaa wrote: "1) Nobody wants to attach their PC to their TV"
Obviously, home theater PCs exist, as FunkSoulBrother admitted. So these users must have been using hyperbole, or exaggeration as a figure of speech, as was the writer of the headline of the featured article.
Windows NT is "heavily inspired" by VMS in the same way that DOS was heavily inspired by CPM.
According to Wikipedia's article about early DOS, this would mean that Windows NT "had a command structure and application programming interface that imitated that of Digital [Equipment Corp.'s VMS] operating system, which made it easy to port programs from the latter." What other excuse would there be to keep (say) 32 priority levels, each with two half-levels?
There was also a FreeVMS project a while back but they decided to restart it from scratch and pretty soon it wasn't intended as a reimplementation of VMS, but rather a new OS vaguely based off of it.
Exactly. If someone wants to reach users of all three mobile platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows 10 S) or users of all three desktop platforms (Windows desktop, macOS, and GNU/Linux), he'd have to write an application three times as a native application. Or he could write it once as a web application.
For one thing, this is a Mac exclusive. For another, it requires the developer to have ported the application to iOS in the first place. Or since when has there become a way to take an Android or UWP application and recompile it for iOS with no changes?
Using a different browser at a different location, I see prices. But neither Starter nor Professional appears to support X11/Linux. Only Enterprise (roughly $3000 per seat) does.
If you repeatedly ran into screens like the following, would you find it still "worth the trade-offs"?
GNU/Linux: Buy Now Windows desktop: Buy Now Android: Buy Now on Google Play Store Your preferred platform: Join our mailing list to be notified when the crowdfunding campaign begins
So what apps do you use that do not rely on a central server anyway because the primary goal of such apps is to do stuff together with others (chat, social network, managing data)
I regularly use FamiTracker, Python, cc65, and FCEUX Debugger in my work. These are locally installed applications. We also use various collaboration platforms, but each of them can be replaced with an equivalent: forums with forums, mail servers with mail servers, IRC servers with IRC servers, and Git servers with Git servers.
even in somewhere like NYC you lose your network connection on the subway between stops so an application which needs a connection all the time to run is unusable
this particular situation can be solved by your transit authority - the technology exists to extend cellular signals into subways
Though that alleviates the coverage problem, it doesn't alleviate the cost to users of having to subscribe to two ISPs: one at home and one cellular.
That might work for large companies, which can afford sufficient instances of all six major platforms on which to test compiled executables as well as the recurring fees for a presence on iOS and Windows app stores. It might not work quite as well for amateurs or small companies, which cannot.
A laptop that's already underpowered, being forced to do emulation?
Your phone is forced to do emulation whenever it visits a website containing JavaScript, or whenever it runs a PhoneGap app written in JavaScript, or whenever it runs an Android app written in Java.
How's that going to perform, and what's going to happen to battery life when you're running apps through emulation?
Probably about as well as 68000 emulation in Mac OS 7.5 and 8.x for PowerPC, or about as well as PowerPC emulation in Mac OS X 10.5 for Intel. The former was an interpretive 68LC040 emulator, and Connectix sold a replacement emulator called Speed Doubler that used dynamic recompilation. Apple eventually got its own dynarec going by the time the Power Macs switched to PCI. The latter was Rosetta, an outsourced dynarec. In both cases, syscalls were native, and apps that spent a lot of time inside syscalls saw little speed hit. Likewise, any calls from an emulated x86 application into the DLLs that implement Windows API will more than likely switch to native code.
I regularly use FamiTracker, OpenMPT, and a few other applications. They aren't available as Linux native applications, but they work usably in Wine 1.8 in Debian 9 "Stretch". The one problem is that the x86 code won't work on an ARM processor without some sort of x86-to-ARM dynamic recompiler, such as that in Windows.
Let me know when [...] the film Song of the South [...] gets released on region 1 DVD
Song of the South
Amazon, about $34.
What format, and what region?
If you're referring to this listing, I doubt that it's a lawful release. For one thing, when I zoomed in on the front cover, the "Disney DVD" mark was misaligned. For another, one review states: "The problem is the audio/video sync is totally off, at times by 5 seconds or more." I've seen a lot of other bootlegs of this film for sale on the web and in person.
But what I want to watch isn't available on Netflix streaming or Netflix DVD. Let me know when the film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, the film Song of the South, or the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea gets released on region 1 DVD. The streaming metasearch sites just say "is not available now.".
For what it's worth, I don't think trying to create popular content so as to get a slice of the advertising revenue is "free money". After all, that's what most websites try to do, does it matter if the platform is Youtube or Wordpress?
Advertisers are willing to pay more for preroll video inventory than for text or static image inventory.
JavaScript less runtime-efficient than writing six C++14 apps, one for each platform (Win32, UWP, macOS, X11/Linux, iOS, Android). But it's more programmer time-efficient, and it's more efficient than requiring full page reloads of the web IRC gateway every 15 seconds in case someone in an IRC channel typed a new message.
Slashdot Mirror
If the developer of a particular application has the budget to make it for only one target platform, the dichotomy is true. And the web with client-side script has greater user base reach than any single native desktop platform.
In this comment, FunkSoulBrother wrote that PC games aren't designed for a living room experience "Because no one does that. [...] I'd be shocked if there were 150,000 Home Theater PCs properly installed and powerful enough for gaming on the continent."
In this comment, kamapuaa wrote: "1) Nobody wants to attach their PC to their TV"
Obviously, home theater PCs exist, as FunkSoulBrother admitted. So these users must have been using hyperbole, or exaggeration as a figure of speech, as was the writer of the headline of the featured article.
Windows NT is "heavily inspired" by VMS in the same way that DOS was heavily inspired by CPM.
According to Wikipedia's article about early DOS, this would mean that Windows NT "had a command structure and application programming interface that imitated that of Digital [Equipment Corp.'s VMS] operating system, which made it easy to port programs from the latter." What other excuse would there be to keep (say) 32 priority levels, each with two half-levels?
There was also a FreeVMS project a while back but they decided to restart it from scratch and pretty soon it wasn't intended as a reimplementation of VMS, but rather a new OS vaguely based off of it.
I believe that project was called ReactOS.
(ReactOS is a clone of Windows NT, whose design is heavily inspired by that of Digital's VMS.)
Exactly. If someone wants to reach users of all three mobile platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows 10 S) or users of all three desktop platforms (Windows desktop, macOS, and GNU/Linux), he'd have to write an application three times as a native application. Or he could write it once as a web application.
use XCode
For one thing, this is a Mac exclusive. For another, it requires the developer to have ported the application to iOS in the first place. Or since when has there become a way to take an Android or UWP application and recompile it for iOS with no changes?
sports are meant to be played, not watched. Go play a sport with the time you invest in watching
Good luck with that if you have any of several disabilities, or if there isn't an amateur league for your sport near where you live.
Using a different browser at a different location, I see prices. But neither Starter nor Professional appears to support X11/Linux. Only Enterprise (roughly $3000 per seat) does.
If you repeatedly ran into screens like the following, would you find it still "worth the trade-offs"?
Why does the Delphi store show "Add to Cart" without a price?
Playing a local game? Those don't 'need' central servers and certainly worked before the internets.
Except nowadays, commercial video games need the Internet for matchmaking even if you're playing on the LAN.
<cough>StarCraft II</cough>
So what apps do you use that do not rely on a central server anyway because the primary goal of such apps is to do stuff together with others (chat, social network, managing data)
I regularly use FamiTracker, Python, cc65, and FCEUX Debugger in my work. These are locally installed applications. We also use various collaboration platforms, but each of them can be replaced with an equivalent: forums with forums, mail servers with mail servers, IRC servers with IRC servers, and Git servers with Git servers.
even in somewhere like NYC you lose your network connection on the subway between stops so an application which needs a connection all the time to run is unusable
this particular situation can be solved by your transit authority - the technology exists to extend cellular signals into subways
Though that alleviates the coverage problem, it doesn't alleviate the cost to users of having to subscribe to two ISPs: one at home and one cellular.
just compile the damn code for each plaform
That might work for large companies, which can afford sufficient instances of all six major platforms on which to test compiled executables as well as the recurring fees for a presence on iOS and Windows app stores. It might not work quite as well for amateurs or small companies, which cannot.
What if [web applications] become the only option?
As long as single-board Real Computers such as Raspberry Pi continue to exist, how will things like Chrome OS become "the only option"?
All content from day one must be accurately labeled in an ESRB-style system
Who pays for age classification of amateur or low-budget professional video?
Please cool it with the name calling.
X86 programs are far more complex and cpu intensive than websites
Have you seen what goes into modern adtech?
A laptop that's already underpowered, being forced to do emulation?
Your phone is forced to do emulation whenever it visits a website containing JavaScript, or whenever it runs a PhoneGap app written in JavaScript, or whenever it runs an Android app written in Java.
How's that going to perform, and what's going to happen to battery life when you're running apps through emulation?
Probably about as well as 68000 emulation in Mac OS 7.5 and 8.x for PowerPC, or about as well as PowerPC emulation in Mac OS X 10.5 for Intel. The former was an interpretive 68LC040 emulator, and Connectix sold a replacement emulator called Speed Doubler that used dynamic recompilation. Apple eventually got its own dynarec going by the time the Power Macs switched to PCI. The latter was Rosetta, an outsourced dynarec. In both cases, syscalls were native, and apps that spent a lot of time inside syscalls saw little speed hit. Likewise, any calls from an emulated x86 application into the DLLs that implement Windows API will more than likely switch to native code.
I regularly use FamiTracker, OpenMPT, and a few other applications. They aren't available as Linux native applications, but they work usably in Wine 1.8 in Debian 9 "Stretch". The one problem is that the x86 code won't work on an ARM processor without some sort of x86-to-ARM dynamic recompiler, such as that in Windows.
Let me know when [...] the film Song of the South [...] gets released on region 1 DVD
Song of the South
Amazon, about $34.
What format, and what region?
If you're referring to this listing, I doubt that it's a lawful release. For one thing, when I zoomed in on the front cover, the "Disney DVD" mark was misaligned. For another, one review states: "The problem is the audio/video sync is totally off, at times by 5 seconds or more." I've seen a lot of other bootlegs of this film for sale on the web and in person.
But what I want to watch isn't available on Netflix streaming or Netflix DVD. Let me know when the film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, the film Song of the South, or the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea gets released on region 1 DVD. The streaming metasearch sites just say "is not available now.".
Would you rather have a web app or a Mac-only app?
Or if your primary computer is a Mac:
Would you rather have a web app or a Windows-only app?
For what it's worth, I don't think trying to create popular content so as to get a slice of the advertising revenue is "free money". After all, that's what most websites try to do, does it matter if the platform is Youtube or Wordpress?
Advertisers are willing to pay more for preroll video inventory than for text or static image inventory.
JavaScript less runtime-efficient than writing six C++14 apps, one for each platform (Win32, UWP, macOS, X11/Linux, iOS, Android). But it's more programmer time-efficient, and it's more efficient than requiring full page reloads of the web IRC gateway every 15 seconds in case someone in an IRC channel typed a new message.
A patch to its CSS to make it less ugly is welcome.