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"Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform." Hewitt's post hinges on that statement, presented without supporting evidence. But actually th

by mapgrep 15y ago

"Let's face facts: the Web will never be the dominant platform." Hewitt's post hinges on that statement, presented without supporting evidence. But actually the Web is already dominant among the platforms Hewitt mentions (Web, Windows, iOS, and Android). Relevant stats: Web - 1.7 billion users as of July, given that 880 million people go to the single busiest website publicly measured by Google, and this site has a "reach" of 51 percent. (You can distill this same total from any of the smaller sites listed via simple division.) http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/ http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/ iOS - 38 million people as of April http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-users-apple-still-trouncing-android/?mod=yahoo_hs http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-users-... Android - 24 million people as of April http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-users-apple-still-trouncing-android/?mod=yahoo_hs http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/19/a-look-at-ipad-users-... Windows - 400 million Windows 7 license sold as of this month, the most popular version of Windows going. http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2011/07/11/400-million-windows-7-licenses-sold.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive... Even if piracy doubles total Windows 7 installs, you're still not halfway to total web users (which means trying to count creaky old XP as the same platform won't get you there, either). Hewitt is a smart guy, ex Facebook, built their iOS client, so clearly he has a thought a lot about platforms. But he undermines his arguments about the future when he is incorrect about the present.

joehewitt 15y ago
Sorry if I didn't make it clear I meant the web will never be the dominant platform in the future once the current trends play out. I am aware of current market share proportions.
- mapgrep 15y ago
  Using the word "never" saves you from having to state when the web ceases to be the dominant platform. When do you think this will be? Something like "the web will never be the dominant platform, except for the past 10 years and the next 10 years" does lack a certain punch, but at least it would be specific :-) (And I appreciate your taking the time to write your blog post, and don't want to be a jerk, but the definition of never is "at no time in the past or future; on no occasion; not ever," so maybe you could rephrase to something like "the web cannot continue indefinitely being the dominant platform," which at least acknowledges its current strength.)
  - joehewitt 15y ago
    You're right, it's not the best sentence I've written in my life. Thanks for the feedback. I was trying to convey that the web is always going to have to fight for its survival, contrary to the common assumption that the web has some magical properties that ensure its long-term prominence.
    - epe 15y ago
      Agreed that the web doesn't have any "magical properties", but it has the "Worse is Better" survival characteristic; or at least it did in its early days. I think the web's continued dominance depends on the extent to which it retains those characteristics.
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
      The web has 1 magical property that no other platform can match (today): launching a website and installing a website are the same thing. This makes the web the most frictionless platform we've ever had, and explains it's widespread usage. Whenever I see these "the web isn't as good as native" discussions I always think back to the late 90s when web-based email took off. How was the user experience on Yahoo mail in 1998? It was full page refreshes on 56k modems. The web doesn't have to maintain pace with native to be relevant, or even to win. It just has to keep being the easy, ubiquitous platform it is today.
- dave1619 15y ago
  I have to agree. iOS and others are innovating so quickly compared to the web, and the usage of native apps especially on mobile devices is just skyrocketing. The trends are pretty clear.
- dangoor 15y ago
  I'm not sure there will be a dominant platform again.
nupark2 15y ago
You're conflating hyperlinked documents and applications. The web is clearly the dominant document platform, but is the web the dominant application platform? The answer is in market success of the emerging mobile (and possibly desktop) application platforms, and the kinds of applications being produced there.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  In user-hours of application use the web is UNQUESTIONABLY the dominant application platform.
  - itsnotvalid 15y ago
    At least the "native" facebook for android uses web pages to serve you the feed and comments.
  - nupark2 15y ago
    I'm not sure why you'd say 'unquestionably,' short of a very loose definition of what makes an application. People spend 8 hours a day using desktop apps -- word, excel, outlook, GIS software, development tools, whatever. They read their email and twitter and consume content throughout the day on their mobile devices. At home they play video games, read books, comics, videos -- all using 'apps' on their TVs, mobile devices, and playstations. Color me unconvinced -- I just took a break from 3 hours reading in iBooks to write this.
    - bad_user 15y ago
      I migrated from Thunderbird to GMail, and from Word/Excel to Google apps. The only desktop apps I'm still using, besides development tools and the actual browser, is a PDF reader + Skype + iTunes + the file manager + Gimp / Photoshop for editing my personal pictures (before uploading them to Flickr). On my Android phone I use native apps for online services, mostly because bandwidth is a problem and native apps have better caching. But the web interfaces for Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are actually usable. I'm not saying that everything should or will move to the web. It would actually be stupid implementing Photoshop in the browser. But the web is clearly dominating my time spent with computers.
Pewpewarrows 15y ago
How does Android only have a reach of 24 million people in that article when they were activating 550,000 devices a day with 130 million devices already sold by July of this year?
polshaw 15y ago
I find it interesting how you are so quick to separate windows XP from windows 7, but ignore browser differences. 99% of apps work on both windows versions and 95% identically, something that definitely can't be said for browsers.
polshaw 15y ago
So who are these web users? Lets assume iOS/android users also have a full computer. Right now i think this is reasonably accurate. So that means all the web users are also computer users. What OS do you think these people are using?? Do you honestly think that the number of people with exclusively OSX/linux outnumber the number of people with unconnected windows PCs? There are a lot of rural areas in the world with poor connectivity, and a lot of people with incomes that make the cost of connection prohibitive (while old computers are litterally dumped). Having said all that, it matters little to the developer, because those unconnected windows users will be almost impossible to reach and won't have the money required to make development viable anyway. TL;DR: More people on windows, but doesn't matter.

by mapgrep 15y ago

joehewitt 15y ago

Sorry if I didn't make it clear I meant the web will never be the dominant platform in the future once the current trends play out. I am aware of current market share proportions.

mapgrep 15y ago
Using the word "never" saves you from having to state when the web ceases to be the dominant platform. When do you think this will be? Something like "the web will never be the dominant platform, except for the past 10 years and the next 10 years" does lack a certain punch, but at least it would be specific :-) (And I appreciate your taking the time to write your blog post, and don't want to be a jerk, but the definition of never is "at no time in the past or future; on no occasion; not ever," so maybe you could rephrase to something like "the web cannot continue indefinitely being the dominant platform," which at least acknowledges its current strength.)
- joehewitt 15y ago
  You're right, it's not the best sentence I've written in my life. Thanks for the feedback. I was trying to convey that the web is always going to have to fight for its survival, contrary to the common assumption that the web has some magical properties that ensure its long-term prominence.
  - epe 15y ago
    Agreed that the web doesn't have any "magical properties", but it has the "Worse is Better" survival characteristic; or at least it did in its early days. I think the web's continued dominance depends on the extent to which it retains those characteristics.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    The web has 1 magical property that no other platform can match (today): launching a website and installing a website are the same thing. This makes the web the most frictionless platform we've ever had, and explains it's widespread usage. Whenever I see these "the web isn't as good as native" discussions I always think back to the late 90s when web-based email took off. How was the user experience on Yahoo mail in 1998? It was full page refreshes on 56k modems. The web doesn't have to maintain pace with native to be relevant, or even to win. It just has to keep being the easy, ubiquitous platform it is today.
dave1619 15y ago
I have to agree. iOS and others are innovating so quickly compared to the web, and the usage of native apps especially on mobile devices is just skyrocketing. The trends are pretty clear.
dangoor 15y ago
I'm not sure there will be a dominant platform again.

nupark2 15y ago

You're conflating hyperlinked documents and applications. The web is clearly the dominant document platform, but is the web the dominant application platform? The answer is in market success of the emerging mobile (and possibly desktop) application platforms, and the kinds of applications being produced there.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
In user-hours of application use the web is UNQUESTIONABLY the dominant application platform.
- itsnotvalid 15y ago
  At least the "native" facebook for android uses web pages to serve you the feed and comments.
- nupark2 15y ago
  I'm not sure why you'd say 'unquestionably,' short of a very loose definition of what makes an application. People spend 8 hours a day using desktop apps -- word, excel, outlook, GIS software, development tools, whatever. They read their email and twitter and consume content throughout the day on their mobile devices. At home they play video games, read books, comics, videos -- all using 'apps' on their TVs, mobile devices, and playstations. Color me unconvinced -- I just took a break from 3 hours reading in iBooks to write this.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    I migrated from Thunderbird to GMail, and from Word/Excel to Google apps. The only desktop apps I'm still using, besides development tools and the actual browser, is a PDF reader + Skype + iTunes + the file manager + Gimp / Photoshop for editing my personal pictures (before uploading them to Flickr). On my Android phone I use native apps for online services, mostly because bandwidth is a problem and native apps have better caching. But the web interfaces for Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are actually usable. I'm not saying that everything should or will move to the web. It would actually be stupid implementing Photoshop in the browser. But the web is clearly dominating my time spent with computers.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago

How does Android only have a reach of 24 million people in that article when they were activating 550,000 devices a day with 130 million devices already sold by July of this year?

polshaw 15y ago

I find it interesting how you are so quick to separate windows XP from windows 7, but ignore browser differences. 99% of apps work on both windows versions and 95% identically, something that definitely can't be said for browsers.

polshaw 15y ago

So who are these web users? Lets assume iOS/android users also have a full computer. Right now i think this is reasonably accurate. So that means all the web users are also computer users. What OS do you think these people are using?? Do you honestly think that the number of people with exclusively OSX/linux outnumber the number of people with unconnected windows PCs? There are a lot of rural areas in the world with poor connectivity, and a lot of people with incomes that make the cost of connection prohibitive (while old computers are litterally dumped). Having said all that, it matters little to the developer, because those unconnected windows users will be almost impossible to reach and won't have the money required to make development viable anyway. TL;DR: More people on windows, but doesn't matter.