Personal Website of Yakov Shafranovich

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Why the Desktop Still Matters

Over the past year or two, there has been a movement in technology circles to move more and more applications, including desktop ones, to the cloud – i.e. servers running remotely and accessible via the web browser. Some have gone as far as stating that the desktop is dead and the browser will be the new OS of the web. However, we tend to forget why the desktop still matters – it provides tremendous computing power locally without any network latencies. With projects like Google Gears, the difference between the desktop and the web, is blurry but it shows that even companies like Google which are built entirely on web applications, see value in offering something that works on the desktop.

My personal opinion is that we will probably end up with a hybrid model – unlike the mainframes of years gone by where all processing was central, and the PCs of yesterday which offer all processing locally; the future is probably a mix where applications work where they do best – locally or remotely, and the difference between the computer and the cloud is seamless. This is why projects like Microsoft’s Live Mash and Apple’s sync service, as well as Mozilla’s and Opera’s similar initiatives are so interesting – they point to the future of the web.

Just my two cents…

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