Hmmm… I’ve developed a web based video editor and certain tasks like applying effects and transitions are running much faster than iMovie on the desktop. Those that aren’t, like pre and post processing the video, are being handled on the server. So I’m not sure the desktop will ALWAYS be a winner for resource heavy apps…
I have to echo the befuddlement of why you were using Microsoft Streets and Trips to begin with. I alway found the alternatives out there (Delorme’s chief amongst them) far far superior to MS’s offering, which always seems a little bit brain-dead.
That having been said, the last time I used a desktop mapping app was in 1998 (a time in which I was still very pro-MS myself, but even I could recognize the Streets and Trips suckage). I found the free and up-to-date nature of MapQuest at that time to make more sense than buying a new version of the CDs every year (and the difference at the time in intelligence making driving routes didn’t matter to me as I’m pretty capable of reading a map to make my own directions).
Today, Google Maps is far far ahead of what the old Street Atlas offered, not just in proviing directions but also in terms of making an attractive yet highly informative map. MS ST looks pretty much like I remember it being in 1998, except for the new chrome around the popup window.
IMHO, your MS bias is showing. Really. I’ve never heard of anyone actually using MS ST, intentionally, more than once. This is a space where they failed miserably ten years ago, and they still haven’t caught up!
One small but powerful tool seems to be making the Google UI better: a hyperlink can be anywhere on the page and it can do any action. In fact, it’s easier to wire up a hyperlink to a server side CGI script or a client side Javascript function than to set up a whole dumb “form” just to get somethnig that looks like a button. And it’s actually a big pain in the ass if you want to have menus and submenus and subsubmenus and right click context menus and dialog boxes on the web. It encourages, almost forces, a more direct UI because it’s hard to replicate annoying multicontrol multilevel desktop-style UIs.
I forgot to include, it also encourages and almost forces context oriented UI (like all the relevant controls to a location are in the bubble for that location), because it’s just as easy to put them there (in fact probably easier) then to stick them all up in some far away toolbar or menu. But in traditional desktop GUI toolkits, they make it really easy to add buttons to menus and toolbars, but hard to invent nice contextually relevant panes and panels.
I completely disagree with this line: “…killed Desktop Applications”. The word “Application” is too generic to announce this opinion and then this article. It should remain specific to internet services only and yes, when you are getting something free, chances are that you will not complain about it.
Is anybody using some image manipulation tool on internet and then telling us it is better than desktop application i.e. photoshop?
As far as Desktop UI is concerned, users do not want it to be changed in every version of their applications. Believe me they do some serious stuff with these applications and not just email, surf, watch online movie traliers, shopping etc. From product manager’s point of view, it is always a challenge to integrate new features with existing user interface of his application to make users feel better and familiar!
Internet Explorer is an application and tell me if MS changed its UI with every version? How would it feel if they add some funny UI stuff in every release?
My questions is: Is Internet an application platform or service platform? Is it okay to compare websites with desktop applications?
Last questions: Who is catching up with whom? Outlook catching GMail or GMail catching Outlook?
I would recommend comparing desktop Picasa to online Picasa. That would be a fair comparison. And maybe you’ll realize that nobody killed “desktop apps”. And maybe you’ll realize that there is no such thing anymore as “desktop apps”.
Your concluding sentence is completely insane. “It’s hard not to conclude that desktop applications are dead?” Come on…considering that the browser itself is a desktop application, I think they are far from dead. Web-based office applications are still in a very primitive state, not to mention entire categories of applications for which there are no meaningful web-based alternatives…games, development tools (IDEs, compilers), advanced editors of any sort (photos, movies, audio), etc. I would argue, as much as I do find GMail useful, that even e-mail editing and management on the web is not all that hot (although I guess I would conclude it’s in a tie for last with Outlook).
More to the point I think Google Maps highlights that web applications are actually alive, which is interesting. That fact that Google Maps can compete favorably with ST demonstrates that requiring a moderately rich user interaction no longer rules out the web - and in fact may be better than similar desktop applications given some of the advantages of web-based computing (notwithstanding the differences in design which are mostly a function of the product team).
First, interfaces will change ecologically just as all things do. Those with bad interfaces die out on their own. The platform is irrelevent.
Second, You’re comparing apples and oranges. Currently, the engineering application I work on has to chew through gigabyte to terabyte size blocks of binary data. This is a little different from some cutesy little consumer or CRM web application and not likely to be webified until distributed computing is much easier to accomplish than it is now.
Third, I know we’d all like to live in a world of free wireless ubiquitous internet. In this world, however, I have trouble getting a cell phone call reliably more than a few miles out of town, much less free wi-fi. I need stand-alone applications to get work done when I’m not connected.
There’s an underlying assumption that everything works the same as a video, map or CRM application. The software world is much more varied than that. There will always be a place for both type of applications, as shown by the existence of google gadgets.
If you are looking for an answer to the original question, I think the general gut-reaction answer will usually be Google anyway. Its only going to get worse for Microsoft as well.
I’m confused. Why hasn’t anyone started a debate yet about whether Google Maps runs better under Windows or Linux??? Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
-john
If you read the book Hackers Painters by Paul Graham, he makes a whole point about web applications and how they are much better from the company and user side and etc… From the company it makes sense, by for the user its no so clear… but I guess this might be some sort of proof.
Desktop apps can bring the full power of GDI32/Avalon to bear, and yet rarely do. Resulting in apps that are hard to use. Web based applications have to use a dinky little pocket scripting language to manipulate incompatible DOM’s across at least 4 major browsers and yet the apps are often easier to use. Even the ones powered by Flash aren’t as easy to use as they could be. By the time you make a flash interface easy to use, you’re almost back to just straight HTML w/Javascript.
It’s almost enough to make you believe in the 37 signals mantra “constraints are good”.
Oh, and the death of the desktop application was ruled a suicide.
While Google Maps may have more up to date maps, Streets and Trips is much more likely to provide accurate directions
I’ve had good and bad experiences with both. I don’t think any mapping solution will provide perfect directions every time.
alway found the alternatives out there (Delorme’s chief amongst them) far far superior to MS’s offering
I’ve tried Delorme-- I even had a version bundled with that old 1998 serial port GPS that took 4 AA batteries-- but I liked ST better. I haven’t looked at newer versions, but I’d assume it’s mired in the same old toolbars, menus, right-click GUI paradigm, too.
in traditional desktop GUI toolkits, they make it really easy to add buttons to menus and toolbars, but hard to invent nice contextually relevant panes and panels.
Reed, exactly!
The Google Gears is something that Microsoft should consider doing. It would allow you to choose a start and end, and it could grab the images before there.
“This should be an unfair comparison. Streets and Trips is free to harness the complete power of the desktop PC, whereas Google Maps is limited to web browser scripting and HTTP calls to the server”
LoL! - This is written like the combined power of googles web servers are no match for a single x86/g5 processor ;o)
XAML and .NET 3 anyone?
While not forcing developers to abandon ‘menus and toolbars’ paradigms, it offers at least WYSIWYG for designining of modern (web-like) interfaces.
For me, the desktop apps got a second breath.
At the risk of sounding paranoid, another difference between the two is that (if signed in, which I usually am), Google has a record of where you travel, which it can then add to its already-voluminous collection of personal information…
“Web apps have to change rapidly because they suck. Desktop apps don’t have to change rapidly because they work just fine.”
Please, tell us more.
Jeff’s comparison of “Who Killed the Desktop App?” is flawed on one major point, he’s comparing two separate products made by two separate companies. It’s like comparing Firefox to Internet Explorer, sure they both do the same thing, but they are still written by two different groups. What’s not to say that Google makes better applications then Microsoft? In fact, who out there uses Microsoft live (and for those of you that just said ‘I do’… GIGGLE).
In todays world of programming you are confronted with IDEs that do all the coding for you, you add a control and it adds thousands of lines of code. The web is getting close to that with massive AJAX libraries. However, for those companies out there that still roll their own code, they have a chance of it being faster.
There are still pros and cons to web vs desktop. Web is definitely catching up in some aspects. And if you can write a web application that does exactly what you need it to do, then you probably have a winner due to the fact that you can update at will and have less adminstrative overhead involved. But that’s typically for things that are just self-contained that don’t interface with other applications, APIs, etc.
But for those applications that are just so massive, they tend to get to a point that being web-based isn’t feasible and they go back to being a deskop application.
And besides, who’s internet connection is 100% reliable anyway.