How many NEW desktop apps have you installed recently?
We obviously won't see Adobe, Autodesk and some other professional software developers moving their products to web anytime soon, but when we are talking about the new products - web is usually the winner. Look at Chrome and it's pace of innovation, check out the examples from Mozilla Demo Studio, could you imagine that working in all latest major browsers 3 years ago?
Same is true for mobile, I don't see another space for innovation except improving web performance, integration & so on. Maybe you see some other directions where iPhone & Android can go?
How many NEW desktop apps have you installed recently?
I don't install new desktop apps very often because my needs are already solved. I do nearly all my work in:
- Mail.app
- Xcode
- Eclipse
- TeXShop
- Terminal
- Chrome (JIRA, and browsing documents-not-webapps)
I'd prefer a native application for JIRA, but I haven't found a decent one yet.
Same is true for mobile, I don't see another space for innovation except improving web performance, integration & so on. Maybe you see some other directions where iPhone & Android can go?
I expect the iOS and Android platforms to continue to evolve their core libraries, providing significant additional functionality and features for use by mobile applications. Eventually that will slow as the mobile platforms mature.
I'd like to say that I expect the development of higher-level common platforms out of web browsers, but outside of (possibly) WebOS, this seems unlikely.
Compared to the web, iOS and Android have comprehensive platform APIs with consistent widgets and user experiences (iOS more than Android when it comes to consistency), support for multiple programming languages and runtimes, immediate access to platform vendor's APIs (playing video doesn't involve an browser vendors arguing over <video>, etc.
> How many NEW desktop apps have you installed recently?
I install (and uninstall) games pretty regularly. To me these have the potential to be the big differentiator. It will be interesting to see if we end up with fragmentation (think DS vs. PSP vs. iOS) or ports of most major releases as long as each platform has decent market share (Xbox 360 vs. PS3).
It seems that hardware-wise and market share-wise, we're trending towards seeing major releases on at least iOS and Android. What's interesting to me here is that (1) so far it seems like indie developers are playing a larger role on the mobile gaming scene, and they won't necessarily have the resources to do a launch on both platforms until their games become hits, and (2) for whatever reason it seems like the Android gaming market (and app market in general) is very anemic compared to iOS, despite having a large install base. (This is just my subjective opinion based on using an Android phone for the last few months.)
As a side note, I do agree that in general desktop OS choice is less important than it used to be, but I think that it's due more to the democratization of data than it is to the rise of web apps. Getting a Mac file to open on a friend's PC used to be pretty difficult for the average user.
We obviously won't see Adobe, Autodesk and some other professional software developers moving their products to web anytime soon, but when we are talking about the new products - web is usually the winner. Look at Chrome and it's pace of innovation, check out the examples from Mozilla Demo Studio, could you imagine that working in all latest major browsers 3 years ago?
Same is true for mobile, I don't see another space for innovation except improving web performance, integration & so on. Maybe you see some other directions where iPhone & Android can go?