The brilliant Paul Graham wrote:
everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that now.
Rumors of the desktop’s demise are premature. As described in my analysis of Hosted vs. Local Applications there are simply too many important scenarios for the desktop to go away. Information and creativity workers spend much of their waking lives using computers and require the fastest response possible. They require reliable access to them, even at 30,000 feet, even at overcrowded overseas cafés. They and the businesses and governments they work for require sovereignty over their sensitive information.
The solution to these needs is locally stored apps and data. This will not change for a long time.
Casual users & Internet Appliances
That said, most people on the planet are not information workers. They’re like my mom. Year after year, she uses her computer for communicating, browsing, light gaming and not much more. Her PC is both overpowered and sub-par for the job: overpowered with capacity she will never use, sub-par because it takes too long to bootstrap that capacity just to check email. The telephone gives a dial tone the moment the receiver is lifted — why can’t the machine show your latest messages the moment the email button is pressed?
Casual computer users like my mom would be better served by an inexpensive Internet appliance. For these users, it doesn’t matter whether apps and data are stored locally or remotely, as long as a stable net connection is available. New users in developing countries fall into the same camp.
This era of Internet appliances is almost upon us with new categories of products like the Palm Foleo, the OLPC, the iPhone, and the Nokia Internet Tablet. These type of portable devices (sometimes blended with, sometimes an adjunct to a cellphone) will become the only machine many people in the world will ever need. Especially when they become cheap and dockable to keyboards, mice and larger monitors for longer stretches of use (that’s a vision to steal).
Hybrid apps
Paul Graham and I need not argue about extremes like the death or immortality of the desktop. There is a happy medium between all-hosted and all-local applications, a Reese’s Peanut Butter solution. The best of both worlds is to download and cache first class applications in their entirety and run them locally with the highest-fidelity UI frameworks available. (Hint: not AJAX, not browser apps). The apps would update themselves from trusted sources when necessary — seamlessly, automatically, in the background, with no hands. They would give users access to data that is best stored locally (high definition movies, private data and photos, and so on). Since today’s OS platforms do not support this I’m counting it as another vision to steal.
A 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 the boundaries of app richness within a browser frame. But they are still within a browser frame, an unsuitable container for a complete computing experience. Adobe, Microsoft and Sun are on the case with AIR, Silverlight, and JavaFX respectively, new platforms for rich internet applications (RIAs) that live on the desktop rather than within the browser.
As we look forward to the Internet Appliance era, we can put away the eulogy for the desktop. It will not be necessary.
8/3/07 Update: The Zonbu is directly targeted to the casual computer users described above. It is only $100! Great deal! I think. Plus $13/month for 2 years Linux PC with local applications, 4GB of flash storage and remote backup. Total cost $370.95 for 2 years. Optical drive and WiFi costs extra $49+$29=$78. Total so far $449. Monitor, mouse and keyboard are not included. Photo storage will be constrained. Flash video stutters. It’s Linux. It doesn’t work with iTunes or any other Mac-only or Windows-only app. Down the slippery slope we go. Maybe your mom would be better off with a Mac Mini?
