Ask HN: Is Desktop Software Dead? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Desktop Software Dead?

14 pointsfloppydisk9 comments

Digging through my list of installed applications recently at home and at work, I realized I could break it down into a three major categories:

Work -- code editors, IDEs, compilers, etc. Utility -- Email, IRC & IM clients, office productivity suites, and system maintenance. Entertainment -- Games, Media Management Software

Everything else now relies on the web, even email. Watching all the companies and products talked about here and other small business news sources, everyone seems to follow the trend of building their application for web and/or mobile devices and skipping the desktop entirely. Having not see any recent pronouncements of smaller companies pursuing the desktop, I'm curious to know if desktop software is "dead" to the startup world and left to the monoliths like MS and Apple?

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No, desktop software is not dead yet.

You can erect the headstone when you can do everything in the cloud ... at 40,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific, without horrendous latency issues. Or in the middle of a backwoods area with one bar of GSM signal showing on your mobile phone and no ADSL to the local phone exchange because it's several miles away. Or when you can guarantee that no foreign government is going to yank a rack of servers hosting a slice of your cloud-hosted app simply because an IP address traced to some other VM in that hosting centre was being used for bittorrent or posting counter-regime propaganda or something.

Don't get me wrong: the cloud is useful. The killer apps right now seems to be collaboration and backup -- DropBox in particular. It may also be useful within well-networked corporate enterprises where consistent access to services can be maintained and central curation of IT resources is a desirable business goal (i.e. locking down what staff may or may not do with corporate IP). But until broadband is ubiquitous and reliable and fast, the cloud isn't ready for universal consumer uptake -- and that's going to take a very long time (decades, not single-digit years).

You can erect the headstone when you can do everything in the cloud ... at 40,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific, without horrendous latency issues.

Well, not quite. I don't use any e-mail software any more- the Gmail web interface is better than most desktop clients I have ever used. With HTML5 it's possible to provide a version of Gmail that works entirely offline (they used to have one with Gears), so that would remove the latency issues.

In that respect, offline web apps could easily replace a lot of desktop apps. But once you have something that requires real processing power the web stuff fails. Native Client may change that, but you're still trapped within browser chrome.

Don't forget industrial and highly secure environments.

Things happen in cycles. Right now 'apps' are pretty hot.

I don't think desktop apps are going anywhere any time soon. Some things are not easily (or well) translated to web versions for various reasons (performance, graphics, offline access requirements, etc).

I feel like your insight could be easily reversed. I can break down my web usage into three categories:

Work -- Python reference, particle data, journal articles, etc.

Utility -- Email & Chat clients, mapping information, and reference look up

Entertainment -- Netflix, shopping, pictures of cats

Everything else I do on my desktop, even chart making.

Big corporations still use desktop software, and I can't see that ending any time soon.

Don't think so. I use a fair number of web apps and can't think of a single one that I wouldn't prefer to have a well designed desktop version of. Gmail, google reader, google calendar, twitter etc I use desktop apps.

No, the daily software should be in the form of desktop.

The entire desktop UI model developed by Xerox is getting very long in the tooth. The computer mouse, cursor, overlapping windows, context menus, cascading menus, etc. It's all going away.

Steve Jobs and the Mac popularized this computing model, and the iPad is now popularizing it's eventual successor, the natural user-interface via touchscreens, voice interface, the cloud, mobile devices, AI.

The iPhone and iPad absolutely represent the next computing era.

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