Over at Apple Matters there is an article proclaiming that The Operating System Is Dead. It’s not the first and it is by no means the last, but like all articles of the type it is very narrow minded and essentially just bollocks. I’ve been meaning to write this article for a long time and pretty much the gist of it is that web apps are a nice concept but a bad idea. Let me explain....

Web apps are incredibly powerful things. You can access your data from anywhere, using any computer. All you need is a web browser and an internet connection. This however brings you two problems. First off, if you don’t have an internet connection then you are screwed. Secondly, you have to use a web browser. Not only do different web browsers display the same page differently, but if you say, accidentally closed a window, you have lost all your work. Everything is done through the web browser. This is why I think that web apps on their own are just a fad and will never reach the level that the hype surrounding them suggests.

Then you get the problems with data transfer. Transferring data around a computer system, from the processor to the ram or the disk is ALWAYS going to be faster than transferring data back and forth over a network connection. As such apps that use a lot of data will never make good web apps. Graphics apps, audio apps, video apps, all of them are very unsuitable for being made into web apps, at least beyond the basics of say, Paint. I can open a 2 hour long video file in quick time and scrub to the end straight away, with a web app I have to wait for the full 2 hours to download before I can do that.

So does this mean that applications will stay the same and web apps will just die out? No, the power will be in combining web apps with desktop apps. The most common example of this is email. Many people have two ways to access their email: through their email client or through web mail. For those who have a desktop email client set up they can download from multiple accounts and manage their email easily. If you don’t have access to this you can just log into your web mail and check up on it while away from your computer.

There are lots of applications making use of this. .Mac is a brilliant example of a service like this. There are a large number of applications that integrate with .Mac, providing them with an easy platform to web apps. For example, one click and you can upload your holiday photos from iPhoto to .Mac or even flickr. You can then view them, or even manipulate them online if you are away from your computer. This is the way I see applications going.

Instead of the internet making operating systems obsolete, it will in fact solidify their place on our computers (well, the fact that a computer needs an operating system to run will do that but you get the idea). You’ll be able to work on your computer as it is now and then upload your work to share with friends. Then, if you are away from your computer for whatever reason you can just hop on a computer with an internet connection and carry on working on what you had.

I see web apps as becoming a way to get around you not being able to access your work directly, not as a means of replacing those applications. This is the way that both Apple and Microsoft are going, with their integration with web services and I think that Google knows that they can’t compete unless they have an operating system base to work from (which could be why they appear to be getting closer to Apple recently, but that’s just guess work). So despite what people like to say, the desktop app is going nowhere. The only thing that’s going to change is how you access your work when your computer isn’t there.