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Comment by wheels | Hacker News Reader

Do you get the sense that everyone in the web world knows that desktop apps aren't going anywhere? This seems obvious to me, but I've gotten into a number of arguments with folks on it.

There seems to be a certain fervor and excitement about "web 2.0" that people seem to get carried away in forecasting its implications.

For me this is kind of amusing, since I've been tracking networking stuff through a couple decades of "thin client" fads. "The network is the computer" is hardly a new idea. :-)

Usually when I want to be really productive on my computer, the first thing I do is unplug the DSL router. :-)

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> Do you get the sense that everyone in the web world knows that desktop apps aren't going anywhere?

When I worked at a company doing enterprise financial software, I got the distinct impression that it was virtually impossible to sell a new desktop app. Our customers wanted everything to be web-based. I was hired as a desktop app developer and got switched over to web development after 8 months because all our new products were web-based.

I suspect that we'll see something similar to what happened with PCs and mainframes. The PC didn't kill the mainframe - all the old apps that used to run on mainframes still ran on mainframes. However, all new software, the category-killers that created new markets, were all developed on the PC. Mainframes stuck around for years before finally being killed by Y2K and web-based intranet apps, and some are still working.

Similarly, I think any attempt to displace office suites and such on the web is a losing battle. PC-based apps are "good enough" for what they're used for. But virtually all new killer apps, the ones with exciting market opportunities, will be on the web. Or they'll be web/desktop hybrids like DropBox, RescueTime, or BitTorrent, in cases where the app needs some local data that the browser can't provide.

Then PC apps will finally be killed by whatever new thick client ends up replacing the web, but we've got a while (maybe 10-20 years) before that happens.

"I said, well daddy dont you know that things go in cycles The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin like Michael" - A Tribe Called Quest

I think that there is indeed a pendulum effect of over-reaction from one mainstream mindset to the other. But one things is for sure, no company in the past was able to predict what the future would bring - if they did they would have switched their ways. I think the sad fact is that these changes in mainstream mindset are very fluid and hard to predict and survival of the fittest company/solution is very much a game of chance.

This might be a reason for the longevity of larger companies like GE that can afford to have many bets on the table.

Agreed. Also, it's finally a way to get customers onto subscription models, which has seemed the holy grail of desktop apps for some time.

Write once, bill forever...

> Usually when I want to be really productive on my computer, the first thing I do is unplug the DSL router. :-)

Is that literally true? (I've done it - but not for a while... maybe I should start doing it again)

The important part: yes. I do disconnect the internet completely. The figurative part: no, I do it by turning off the internet routing, not by actually removing the cable from the wall.

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