Desktop software and Web 2.0
Many people believe that desktop software will become irrelevant as we enter the age of Web 2.0. This seems to be plausible, at least to those of us who worked in technology. However, if we step back and think from an everyday user’s perspective, a different picture emerges.
Jay Larock, a Senior Product Manager at Corel Corporation, wrote an interesting essay that argues why desktop software is still relevant in the age of Web 2.0. His argument is as the follows.
First, we can’t expect the mainstream PC user to make a complete leap to Web based software in the short term. Realistically, most non-techies just don’t care where or what they use to perform their common computing tasks. A lot of us – people who work with or in technology – get really excited about how technology works and what technology we use to perform a certain task. But the majority of people don’t. They just want things to work (Note - if you are reading this while standing in line waiting for an iPhone you aren’t part of the majority).
Second, there continues to be real technical limitations that will hold us back from a Web-only application experience. Internet connectivity still isn’t ubiquitous and won’t be anytime soon. Even when you do have the Web connections you want, things can still be slow and unresponsive (the Office 2.0 conference last year in San Francisco saw multiple demonstrations slowed or stalled by poor connectivity, despite being held in what’s arguably the most wired city in the world). Where connectivity is lacking, local capability is required.
Third, another reason not everything will go to the web is that processors and memory are cheap. People like having computing horsepower at their fingertips (whether they are connected or not) and the rich applications to match.
These are pretty good arguments. My thinking is that desktop software will continue to an important platform for computing, at least in the foreseeable future. However, it will not dominate the computing sphere, as it did once in the 90’s. The upcoming Web platform will be as important as the desktop platform.
We shouldn’t ask the question whether desktop software will survive in the age of Web 2.0 (yes, they will survive). But instead, we should ask: how can Web 2.0 applications (and Semantic Web applications) complement the existing functions of desktop software, so that the users can be made more productive?
Reference:
One huge obstacle to moving the masses to web based software is to make them understand the difference between offline and online, even though it sounds silly. At least 20% of computer users today are unable to distinguish browser, OS, Office apps from each other.
Comment by Vidar Masson — July 31, 2007 @ 9:27 am
I think this “everything is on the web” ideas has been discredited for a while - hence you already see quite substantial atempts to reunite web 2.0 applications with the desktop - think Adobe AIR, Google Gears and JavaFX.
Comment by Valentin — July 31, 2007 @ 10:07 am
I think the issue needs to be looked at from the 80/20 perspective (e.g. 80% of Word users use 20% of its functionality): if the web can provide the basic functionality that satisfy most of the requirements of most of the users, then value is created without “destroying” the place of desktop apps. So when Bill Gates scoffs that Google Docs has less features than WordPad, the question should be, do the features it does have create a valuable online experience?
In the GIS realm, geocoding, routing, and basic geo-lookup have definitively moved to the web–and are superior experiences than their desktop equivalents. What’s next? Buffers and other basic spatial analysis? Interpolated surfaces of point clouds (see GeoCommons)? So the point is not to “replace” ArcGIS with web apps, but rather provide meaningful interactions with geospatial data online for the 99.9999999% of the world who will never, ever, open up a desktop GIS app.
Brian
Comment by Brian Timoney — July 31, 2007 @ 11:45 am
This question was asked differently by me in 2003 and answered in this thesis:
http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~sauermann/papers/sauermann2003.pdf
“If the goal is to have a global Semantic Web,
one building block is a Semantic Desktop,
a Web for a single user. ”
After this, Stefan Decker and Martin Frank published their “Networked Semantic Desktop” paper, and you find several implementations that bring Semantic Web technology to the desktop, http://www.dbin.org, http://www.openiris.org, gnowsis.opendfki.de.
And lots more that are under the “radar”. So, the questions is good, but using the keyword “Semantic Desktop” you easily find an answer. There are many articles about it. If you have more questions, ask the people@semanticdesktop.org
Comment by Leo Sauermann — August 1, 2007 @ 2:20 am
[...] Desktop software and Web 2.0 Many people believe that desktop software will become irrelevant as we enter the age of Web 2.0. This seems to be plausible, at least to those of us who worked in technology. However, if we step back and think from an everyday user’s perspective, a different picture emerges. Jay Larock, a … [...]
Pingback by Semantic Webs Blog » Blog Archive » ACL 2 seminar at U.T. Austin: Toward proof exchange in the Semantic Web — August 19, 2007 @ 8:50 pm
[...] Desktop software and Web 2.0 Many people believe that desktop software will become irrelevant as we enter the age of Web 2.0. This seems to be plausible, at least to those of us who worked in technology. However, if we step back and think from an everyday user’s perspective, a different picture emerges. Jay Larock, a … [...]
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[...] Desktop software and Web 2.0 Many people believe that desktop software will become irrelevant as we enter the age of Web 2.0. This seems to be plausible, at least to those of us who worked in technology. However, if we step back and think from an everyday user’s perspective, a different picture emerges. Jay Larock, a … [...]
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