In my article describing the use cases comparing hosted vs. local applications, I pointed out how hosted applications like Google Calendars, and DabbleDB, while interesting, were useless to people like me who need to maintain control of their own data.
I ended with a vision to steal:
please come up with a consumer-grade way to let users of standalone desktop computers run web apps locally
With Gears, vendors like Google and Dabble may now offer “Either/Or Apps” — applications that are either hosted, or run locally, or both, according to the user’s desire.
One small step for the web, one giant leap for webkind
App developers today face the dilemma of whether to write new apps for the desktop or for the web. Each carried significant pros and cons. They can how have it both ways, building web apps now with the intention of allowing the app to work partially or completely offline once the technologies mature.
Some applications, like Google Calendar, sat in an awkward space between “nice to have on any browser” and “need to have when offline”. Those applications can now exist with neither limitation. Soon, browser-based email will be available to you for offline processing while on an airplane, isolated from the series of tubes.
Hopefully Gears does not preclude apps that are 100% local — where no Internet connection is needed and where no data is ever stored remotely. As the scenarios show, this is and will remain a separate, legitimate need.
Architects and engineers of hosted apps should start thinking through the implications of Either-Or-Apps — allowing sensitive information to be stored locally, allowing apps to be used completely offline, leveraging client-side storage for caching and increased response times. Understanding these tricky problems will be important skills in the years to come.
By Google’s own admission Gears is immature. There are many more important technologies to build out. One example: having the platform own the problem of keeping the two data stores in continuous sync.
Security will also be a concern. Today, web pages have a strict restraining order and may not come within 500 yards of our precious local data. By relying on Gears, our precious data is moving closer to the dangerous part of town.
But Gears represents more than an evolution in Web technologies. It is another crack in the dam for desktop-based apps. While rich native apps will never disappear as a whole, reasons for clinging onto any one of them are falling away one by one.
[...] stepping stone to this future is the Either/Or Apps (EOAs) — web apps running in a web browser that may be local or remote. AJAX and Flex are pushing [...]