Approaching Normal

The rails AJAX demos are cute, but they're a very looooong way to the features needed by serious desktop applications. Drag and drop ... it doesn't behave like the platform drag and drop. Plus, you can't drag to or from external objects into these apps. Functionality that has been around for ages! I like thin client apps, but please, a lot of apps still need to have richer functionality. There's no reason a lot of the funtionality can't be added to AJAX like applications in the future, but to say that these technologies are ready to replace desktop apps is a bit ridiculous.

The only thing ridiculous would be to claim that they can replace all desktop apps right now. Surely, they can't. But they can certainly replace a growing number of desktop applications. Also applications that were previously thought to be solely on the desktop domain. I'm unlikely to throw Photoshop or TextMate over board any time soon, but most information processing applications make for a great web/ajax fit.

I certainly don't think that *everything* can be a web application, David lists some good examples. My point was that thick clients *aren't* coming back. People aren't going to ditch their browser apps in favor of desktop apps, no matter how much Microsoft wants that to be the case.

Larry, I definitely agree that I would never give up web-based apps for desktop apps. In fact, I'm not even trying out desktop apps these days that would otherwise be attractive because the benefits of a web equivalent are so much greater. The thing that struck me about Scoble's comment was how much it mirrored the pattern identified in the Innovator's Dilemma -- the challenged tech moves upmarket, leaving an entire market space open to a 'less sophisticated' technology. Of course, in Christensen's model, the rate of tech growth allows the low-end challenger to meet enough customers needs over time that they migrate to the challenger.

I cannot believe it. Do you really think that those silly cute demos prove that web apps can compete desktop ones?

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