One of the real challenges for web applications on the desktop remains security. Its a great thing to be able to interact with other applications on the desktop and with data on the desktop- and I think that for now this remains a luxury of desktop applications. Given the malice of web applications that are out there, I'd be surprised to see that change. Given this alone, its clear that for applications with a strong need for desktop data, a web app remains a non starter.
Why? Well, I create an awful lot of data - documents, software code, photos, etc. - that I'd like to share more easily, but I wouldn't want to spread it out between multiple services, nor would I trust it to a single service and expect that service to enable me to share my data with competing services. I don't want to hassle with the interop issues of sharing data between services. I create 99% of my data using desktop apps, and I want to keep this data on my machine and choose which services are permitted access to it. It would be great if a future desktop OS could make this much simpler to do.So what about you - where do you keep your data? And do you think that desktop apps are on the way out, or do you believe - as I do - that they'll evolve alongside the web?
Web 2.01: It's a mistake to rule out the desktop
Originally Posted on 10/27/2005 12:28 PM
by Nick Bradbury
Nick Bradbury
Comments