Tuesday, June 10, 2014

How applet culture is ruining native culture


Browser and mobile apps are trending so much that native software are losing ground... as a result we are losing good quality software available on native desktops. Affected domains by browser based apps:
  • Gaming
    • Command and conquer shifting to web.
    • Web based small games that suck... all those facebook invites to games that no gamer wants.

  • Applications and tools:
    • Google talk vs Google hangouts - Skype is easy for newbies and so was Google talk. Google hangouts doesn't stay open without browser and lacks the quality of a native app.
    • User friendly vs complex: techie oriented in case of apps but native apps can be used by most users (generally(.
    • Microsoft's integration of web apps with the windows 8 desktop - good way to go and a hope for better trends and integration. No matter how much free software users may hate Microsoft, but Microsoft is sticking to their aspiring for user friendly interfaces and hence retaining the general population as customers where as Google is even tangentially leaning against their own data liberation freedom trends that they beat the market with by not allowing mass download of hangout chats like they do with email and forcing browser based hangouts on users who were happily using Gtalk as a native application.
  • Browser overloading as a result of running so many non native browser based apps.
  • Browser environment vs desktop environment: comfort; if you have used native applications, you will know how much more user comfort they provide as compared to web apps, speed: native applications are always tapped into the hardware and middle level resources and are mostly much faster.
  • Web apps hardly fully use all the hardware resources a computer provides.
On the other hand collaboration and syncing may go better with the app culture; better collaboration (online and live) in Google docs than in Dropbox (which needs saving files repeatedly to sync).

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