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Your browser. Your OS. Your video editor. Your DAW. Most embedded systems found around your home and workplace and transportation. Air traffic control. Scientif

Your browser. Your OS. Your video editor. Your DAW. Most embedded systems found around your home and workplace and transportation. Air traffic control. Scientific data analysis. Most video/computer games.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> Your browser. Your video editor. Your DAW. I'll grant you those, though I've been hearing noise about DAWs starting to move to the browser. And, of course, you omitted image editing, which at this point is almost completely taken over by a small number of SaaS offerings (Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, Canva). > Your OS. I'd wish. At this point Microsoft is, both explicitly and unironically, saying that Windows "is a Service". I literally saw that on a Win10 installer screen the other day. > Most embedded systems found around your home and workplace and transportation. Much good it does me if the control plane goes through a cloud server. See my other comment in this subthread. > Air traffic control. Hopefully, maybe, but I'm no longer certain of it. Web SaaS apps have been popping up in ground and maritime transportation for a while now, so aviation may be already affected too. > Scientific data analysis. That's cloud-dependent these days. > Most video/computer games. Most high-end video games are SaaS now. Even in single-player mode, as again, the vendor's servers are on the control path, and the game won't boot without at least acquiring a license from a server and checking for updates. Just because it doesn't run in a browser, doesn't mean it's not SaaS.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  SaaS does not mean "the software opens a socket and communicates with a server for brief portions of its runtime". It does not mean "cloud-based". It does not mean whatever Microsoft wants it to mean. SaaS means that a substantial portion of the compute task associated with "an application" can only be completed via a server request (whether it's to initiate the compute task, or fetch the code that will run it, or some combination of the two).
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > SaaS means that a substantial portion of the compute task associated with "an application" can only be completed via a server request (whether it's to initiate the compute task, or fetch the code that will run it, or some combination of the two). Does "ask for permission to run local code" count? Then modern video games, and quite a lot of other software, count. Per your "initiate the compute task", my robot vacuum is fully SaaS. > It does not mean whatever Microsoft wants it to mean. What Microsoft means fits your definition, they're just taking a soft approach - Windows now constantly fetches new code from the cloud, they're just not forcing it to be a required dependency, should you want to turn this behavior off. Also remember I called out software being implicitly SaaS, not explicitly. Related: forcing people away from Windows 7. Half a year ago, my wife was forced to upgrade her perfectly fine Windows 7 laptop to Windows 10, which she actively hates, because suddenly, third-party software like Spotify begun refusing to work, showing instead messages to the tune of "upgrade to newer Windows or GTFO". Yes, it's not Microsoft doing this per se, but the effect is the same. Implicit SaaS is a software ecosystem problem.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> Your browser. Your video editor. Your DAW. I'll grant you those, though I've been hearing noise about DAWs starting to move to the browser. And, of course, you omitted image editing, which at this point is almost completely taken over by a small number of SaaS offerings (Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, Canva). > Your OS. I'd wish. At this point Microsoft is, both explicitly and unironically, saying that Windows "is a Service". I literally saw that on a Win10 installer screen the other day. > Most embedded systems found around your home and workplace and transportation. Much good it does me if the control plane goes through a cloud server. See my other comment in this subthread. > Air traffic control. Hopefully, maybe, but I'm no longer certain of it. Web SaaS apps have been popping up in ground and maritime transportation for a while now, so aviation may be already affected too. > Scientific data analysis. That's cloud-dependent these days. > Most video/computer games. Most high-end video games are SaaS now. Even in single-player mode, as again, the vendor's servers are on the control path, and the game won't boot without at least acquiring a license from a server and checking for updates. Just because it doesn't run in a browser, doesn't mean it's not SaaS.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
SaaS does not mean "the software opens a socket and communicates with a server for brief portions of its runtime". It does not mean "cloud-based". It does not mean whatever Microsoft wants it to mean. SaaS means that a substantial portion of the compute task associated with "an application" can only be completed via a server request (whether it's to initiate the compute task, or fetch the code that will run it, or some combination of the two).
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > SaaS means that a substantial portion of the compute task associated with "an application" can only be completed via a server request (whether it's to initiate the compute task, or fetch the code that will run it, or some combination of the two). Does "ask for permission to run local code" count? Then modern video games, and quite a lot of other software, count. Per your "initiate the compute task", my robot vacuum is fully SaaS. > It does not mean whatever Microsoft wants it to mean. What Microsoft means fits your definition, they're just taking a soft approach - Windows now constantly fetches new code from the cloud, they're just not forcing it to be a required dependency, should you want to turn this behavior off. Also remember I called out software being implicitly SaaS, not explicitly. Related: forcing people away from Windows 7. Half a year ago, my wife was forced to upgrade her perfectly fine Windows 7 laptop to Windows 10, which she actively hates, because suddenly, third-party software like Spotify begun refusing to work, showing instead messages to the tune of "upgrade to newer Windows or GTFO". Yes, it's not Microsoft doing this per se, but the effect is the same. Implicit SaaS is a software ecosystem problem.