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Wasted Effort

People who take the time to build desktop apps where competent web-apps already exist are idiots.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “Wasted Effort”

  1. mcfunley Says:
    January 25th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

    That’s kind of a generalization, don’t you think? How do you define a competent web app?

    It’s hard to imagine a web app that exceeds the quality of the best possible (web-enabled) desktop app in the same space. It’s true that the web app is usually more practical.

  2. Udi Says:
    January 25th, 2007 at 11:01 pm

    Yes, it’s definitely possible to create a better experience on the desktop.

    However, doing so requires a lot of effort and in my opinion this would be wasted effort IF there’s already a good web-based solution. I’m talking about things like RSS readers and email clients. If there’s a good one on the web, no one is going to download (let alone buy) your desktop version.

    This is certainly not true of every type of application. For instance, I’d argue that no competent web based word processor or spreadsheet yet exists, so this wouldn’t apply there.

  3. mcfunley Says:
    January 26th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    That’s kind of like saying that building a bridge is useless because a boat is good enough.

  4. Udi Says:
    January 26th, 2007 at 10:50 pm

    I’m not sure I understand the analogy.

    Check this out

  5. mcfunley Says:
    January 27th, 2007 at 1:09 am

    The analogy is that the bridge is an improvement on an existing system, and it’s not something that can be built incrementally from what exists.

    You are essentially saying that nobody should ever try to come up with a better system when one that “works” exists, which is weird.

  6. Udi Says:
    January 27th, 2007 at 3:36 am

    The inherent advantages to web based software (Mainly portability, but also seamless release distribution, social potential and more) mean that once something works well on the web, people will never go back to the desktop.

    Unless, like you’re saying, the thing you build for the desktop is in some way revolutionary. Then it might be worthwhile, but not if it’s just an incremental improvement.

  7. micka Says:
    October 10th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    This Udi guy don’t know where he lives.
    I can show you millions of web-base-disaster applications or applications that can be only desktop-based.

    Like this one: http://www.bionixwallpaper.com/

    Or a 3D game (ever heard about Crysis?)