Comment by orcasushi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orcasushi | Hacker News Reader

Because desktop apps are harder to make money with. They are easy to crack / pirate. Also making a monthly subscription is harder for a desktop app (you would need still also a webapp to check for the monthly subscription).

It is on the other hand very hard to pirate software that only runs on some server. Also quite easy to force a monthly subscription if you simply hide app behind a login screen. Additionally your webapp also has the data of the user hostage so the user can not switch to a competitor.

So basicly I think webapps are a dark pattern. The user of course prefers desktopapps but due to above reasons there is hardly incentive to build them.

Will this change? I think so yes. Eventually this whole Saas bubble will burst, because - Chrome filesystem API will make building a desktop app as easy as a webapp - Open source and crowd funded software will pay the bill for those making desktop apps and users will be more then willing to switch.

When will this happen? If we are lucky within 5 years, but more likely 20 or 30 years.

So, you start with the idea that people prefer making web apps essentially because "money". Then conclude that making desktop apps will eventually go back to be the favorite, because they'll become as easy to make as web apps. Doesn't that imply that ease of development, distribution, and maintenance are (the?) current major factors?

The economics of web apps is a pretty straight line and may not point to a particular cupid trend. If you make a web app and want to serve it, someone has to foot the bill (bandwidth, storage, security, maintenance, etc). Also, people will keep asking for improvements and fixes. If you want to offer nicer things, you may want to hire a UI/UX dev. If the app becomes popular, at some point you'll have no choice than to generate some income. It means that you can finance the app through either donations (which you can pull off if you're super popular, like Lichess), ads (if you're reasonably popular, like Photopea), or subscriptions (if you're in a niche, like many of the one-person SaaS out there).

Also, your target audience may express its preference for one monetization model over others. If you build a web competitor to the Salesforce suit, you might be surprised to see many of your prospective users frown when they ask you how much it costs and you reply "donations".

Desktop app are harder to distribute on all platforms. Also harder to distribute upgrades.

You may need to support older versions because somewhere, you will have a user who don't want to upgrade.

This means you have to maintain multiple versions of your documentation.

You seriously think we will use concepts such as Desktops, Browsers, or even Apps in 30 years?

I sure hope so. Because if not, that will mean everything is on "the cloud" -- and the main thing to know about "the cloud" is that there is no such thing, it's just someone else's machine. And if everything is on that, the owner of that machine will in practice have become Big Brother. It doesn't matter if there's just one of him or some oligarchy of a few of them.

Wether it be the Federation or the Empire; MicroGoog, OraFace, or Applazon; or any combination thereof -- Big Brother will inevitably be evil because A) Power corrupts (where is "Don't be evil" now?), and B) the whole idea of a "Big Brother" with absolute power is evil.

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