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That's a common belief but there are a lot of exceptions that mean we should question how true this really is. 1. Mobile-first, mobile-only apps. 2. Minecraft

That's a common belief but there are a lot of exceptions that mean we should question how true this really is. 1. Mobile-first, mobile-only apps. 2. Minecraft or really any game. 3. The proliferation of Electron apps that are basically downloadable versions of the website. 4. Apple's own suite of apps. Keynote is pretty darn popular. In the case of a user who is really, really unmotivated to comment on a doc, sure. Then every click, every second counts because the user doesn't really have a fixed need to complete the task to begin with. For most other things, users are willing to download apps and may even prefer it. It's also worth considering that Writely/Docs never really supplanted Word and is still rather feature poor even after a decade of continuous development, perhaps because they keep having to rewrite the rendering engine. If Docs was a downloadable app with a simple web-side static renderer + commenting engine, it might have obtained features that could offset any loss of casual users due to needing a download to collaborate. Especially if the download was fast, tight and transparent.

simonh 5y ago
I think a major advantages for me are easy bookmark-ability and sharing via URLs to people who may not have the app. You can bodge workarounds for those things in an offline app, but now the bookmarks aren't in my browser or I have to copy them to it, or the people I share the doc to are just looking at a browser rendered viewer or something. While Docs hits 95% of my needs there's still that 5% and I suspect most of those are held back by the current implementation architecture. Hopefully moving to a Canvas based system will enable them to more easily add complex features.
ec109685 5y ago
On the other hand, allowing for a native desktop app could have caused it to end up in the same state as Microsoft's apps on the web (e.g. the web version of PowerPoint is pretty awful), which would have undermined a key differentiator between Docs and Microsoft's suite. I am not sure what has held gSuite back all these years, but the pandemic seems to have brought them out of their slumber.

simonh 5y ago

I think a major advantages for me are easy bookmark-ability and sharing via URLs to people who may not have the app. You can bodge workarounds for those things in an offline app, but now the bookmarks aren't in my browser or I have to copy them to it, or the people I share the doc to are just looking at a browser rendered viewer or something. While Docs hits 95% of my needs there's still that 5% and I suspect most of those are held back by the current implementation architecture. Hopefully moving to a Canvas based system will enable them to more easily add complex features.

ec109685 5y ago

On the other hand, allowing for a native desktop app could have caused it to end up in the same state as Microsoft's apps on the web (e.g. the web version of PowerPoint is pretty awful), which would have undermined a key differentiator between Docs and Microsoft's suite. I am not sure what has held gSuite back all these years, but the pandemic seems to have brought them out of their slumber.