The place is on my screen
I read a post by some guy talking about how the compuhyperglobalmeganet is “still the place”.
Luckily he’s wrong. Using “still” implies that eventually the web won’t be the place, but then he goes on to sell the web dev platform. I’m confused, but whatever. :)
The web is not the only place to do work. But you all already know what the counter to this is don’t you? The whole integration aspect of an application is key. The way an app works (web or not). The responsiveness of an app (desktop or not).
And usually the person making the argument for or against web development or app development is really just arguing for their choice in their development platform. Someone who works on web 5.0 applications with php.activex.net.rails is of course going to want more people to write applications in their favorite language/sdk. Anyone who works on a desktop app is going to deride that web tech.
Getting more people to write for the same platform you do both gives you good feelings by validating your choices. It also helps to drive more users/customers to your platform of choice, along with money and business and power and glory and people who write about your platform and you. It’s beautiful to have your choices validated by others, and this is really the key to the whole thing.
The user however, isn’t going to care as much. They care about it being pretty, being functional, being fast, and not being in the way. And those priorities are not going to be in any particular order, since they are all important. They probably care about things you haven’t planned, that aren’t on my list, and really can’t be expected. But almost none of them care if it’s web or not web, they care if it does what they want.
Mr. Daring Fireball is indeed right to not be pleased about this rumored change. John is in the same boat as I am, i use the official twitter client for mac. It has a lot of issues, but overall it stays out of my way. I do love that it supports Growl of course. However, I’ll find another alternative, and for twitter it’ll be a desktop app if at all possible, since the web app doesn’t function how I need it to.
That’s the point that Reg misses, or at least doesn’t address. Someone needs to text him and let him know that it’s not about web apps or mac apps or iOS apps or android apps or or or. It’s about it working. Clara Peller would agree with me here. You need to focus more about what your web app or desktop app or whatever is actually doing that helps your life, and less about your advocacy of your individual development choice. I personally enjoy working on cocoa apps, that doesn’t mean that I don’t find sites like art.sy useful.
Hopefully the rumor isn’t true. Or twitter at least open sources the mac app if it is true. But the bigger, older discussion about web apps vs desktop apps is rearing its ugly head. Let’s stop it now. There are better discussions to be had, that haven’t been rehashed since before my oldest was born. Discussing usability and addressing user concerns is a better discussion than “omg it’s so much harder to write a desktop app and maintain it than writing it in one spot!”. It’s old, it’s tired, and really this sort of discussion was around literally when I was in high school. Let’s move on guys and gals. Because if we don’t move on the next 6 months of trendy discussions on the internet are really going to be boring rehashed messes. Pretty please?