Keep in mind I'm looking at this from a mainstream consumer angle, not a hacker angle. This also means I have a much, much longer definition of "new". The way

Keep in mind I'm looking at this from a mainstream consumer angle, not a hacker angle. This also means I have a much, much longer definition of "new". The way I see it, the main killer apps for computers throughout the 1980s and 1990s were business software: Office, Quicken, etc. Web-only killer apps for mainstream audiences: Google, Wikipedia, MySpace/Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, EBay, Flickr. Some of those are Web 1.0, but all the same, I can't think of any home runs for the mainstream audience since the late '90s that have been desktop software. In fact, the last one I can think of is instant messaging clients, which are now moving onto the web. Your "same old online stuff" is the main thing people are thinking of when people say "I'm buying a computer to surf the web".