Everything is going into the cloud. Or is it?
If you listen to Google, the Web browser is becoming everything when it comes to how people use their computers. With the Chrome OS hitting the market soon, Google is ramping up its efforts to convince consumers that the need for desktop applications is disappearing because anything you want to do with a computer can happen online. This quote from Linus Upson, Google’s v.p. of engineering, makes this belief clear as a bell:
“Everything’s happening on the Web. All of the companies and all of the services that people are using — Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay — all of the applications and services that people are using are Web-based. The desktop ecosystem has basically stopped.”
If you’re Google, this is a no-brainer approach given the major growth of the Chrome browser and Google’s the number of online services such as Google Docs, Picasa, Google Calendar and GMail. In the Google world, there are fewer reasons to use desktop applications and, of course, reduced need for Microsoft’s operating system.
The question is whether the desktop is actually dying amid the tsumani of cloud computing. As more applications going to be online will there be little use for desktop applications, or has the enthusiasm about cloud computing become over-heated and frothy?
There is little doubt that cloud computing is becoming more common but I don’t think it means desktop applications are going to disappear.
There may, in fact, be some users who can and will rely exclusively on online services but, at the same time, there will be many people who will continue to rely on using software that is off the grid. Yes, Virginia, there are people who aren’t online all the time and/or don’t want to use an application that stores all their data in the cloud.
Personally, I continue to use desktop applications. This includes Microsoft Office, Tweetdeck, DayLite, iTunes and 1Password. At the same time, I’m an enthusiastic user of Google Docs, GMail, Dropbox and WordPress.
What it means is I marry the best of what both worlds – the cloud and the desktop – have to offer. For some activities such as working with clients, cloud computing makes a lot of sense. For other activities, a desktop application works really well. It’s just a matter of picking the right application for the right job.
Are you still using desktop applications? Could use see giving them up completely?
The desktop is definitely dying and has been for some time. I’d say it’s nearly dead.
There are only a few applications where it makes sense to write an “app” (keep in mind mobile “apps” are similar to desktop apps in that they run mostly native code):
- Some games (although you can do more and more on the web)
- Some communication (although this is moving to the web too — just look at Google’s embedded phone in Gmail)
Anything else? Nothing I can think of immediately.
Once HTML5 and similar technologies (3d, offline, etc) become completely supported, there will be little reason to write native code applications.
It’ll be a while before you pry my desktop out of my hands. I’m using the cloud more and more via tools like the iPad, but when I want to do serious work it’s on a quadcore machine with a phat 8G of RAM and dual monitors.
My reply in TL;DR summary: desktops are not dead, your just living among the privileged few on top of the technology world, most of the rest of the world does not, before you pronounce something dead look at the broader picture.
Extensive reply:
The desktop is dying indeed, everything is moving to the cloud. Unless of course, you ever leave the office, go outside of the comfort zone of your urban or suburban surroundings and visit the rest of the world. I live in the bay area, an hour and a half from silicon valley. Around me are farms and other rural businesses, and the internet speed of the surrounding area is somewhere between token highspeed (at best the 768kbps comcast et al quote as their minimum) and dial up, sometimes non-existent.
Those who push for the movement to the clouds and other efforts to hasten the future seem to forget or not know that a lot of the world still does not operate at your fast pace. By constantly pushing to move everything to the next big thing, you leave behind all the lessons of the past as well as a large portion of the population. The part of the population you leave is those who have the knowledge and skills to provide you with the basic necessities of your glittering technological marvels, food, water, power, and other such trivial nonsense.
Further what do you give up in return for your “cloud” computing? If your servers get infected and start spewing spam all over the internet can you unplug them? If your internet provider experiences difficulties or there are problems with the inevitable ipv4 to ipv6 switchover, will you still be able to work?
I don’t want to sound bitter or angry, but thing about the ramifications of trying to “kill” a technology, which is what you are trying to do when you pronounce the desktop as dead. Large parts of the world are not yet ready or able to move to the clouds, and may never be able to as it currently exists. Failing to understand that will leave you unprepared when you are either proven wrong or something goes wrong that you were unprepared for. Desktops are an excellent piece of equipment, which allows you to work, regardless of whether your internet is functional, so long as you have power. And you probably will have power around here since many people keep backup generators for when the power goes out a few times each year in the winter.
Full disclaimer, I work for a background screening company in Marin County CA. We use the internet at all times for our business. But when the power or internet goes out, we cannot work that day, because all our sources are digital.
The Desktop is not dead.
And when I am not at a location with Internet access (or the Internet is down) — I just get annoyed that I cannot work on that draft or idea or thing I started online. In fact, there are places and times where 95% of my iTouch APPS are rendered useless and I am looking down at my device thinking: “I sure do have a nice looking piece of shiny metal and glass”.
In addition, I cannot be the only person that will not store banking information, passwords, family photos, drafts of original works, sensitive client information, etc. in the cloud. Yeah good luck with that cloud.
For all intents and purpose the desktop is dying. It’s analogous to the PC in the early days when all in came with was Basic and everyone that had a PC pretty much wrote their own programs.
Even in it’s current form the desktop is still a crude device. You start with a machine that basically does nothing and then IT configures it to run apps that provide 10x more functionality than you need. Gone will be the days when you buy a desktop PC and IT spends hours loading it up with a bunch of generic software and then spends $100s every year keeping in running.
For the majority of people, desktops will be replaced by devices that run apps specific to an individual’s job. People that are mobile, including most managers, will have tablets, people chained to the desk will have workstations that only run certain apps.
Ready made apps will dumb everyone down. The only people still using desktops will be developers, or anyone else that still has the time, patience and know how to run an operating system.
Of course you’ll have to pry my Mac out of my hands before I ever stop using it.