> I have given you fairly detailed technical advantages of native software and offered an explanation why we have (temporarily, I hope) moved back to the stone

> I have given you fairly detailed technical advantages of native software and offered an explanation why we have (temporarily, I hope) moved back to the stone age I don't think you really understand why we moved back to the "stone age" at all, or exactly what kind of stone our age is. I also really don't think you're reading my comments, because fundamentally, we agree. Just making something "native code" isn't a silver bullet that automatically makes it awesome, you know. If it's really native code, then it's only going to run on one OS and one architecture. You would have to make it something slightly higher-level, like a VM, or an interpreted language. Have it talk to a native API. Then, of course, the API should be a least-common-denominator of a bunch of different platforms. So fancy Quartz effects that won't work on Windows, you'll need to either not provide them or mark them as platform-specific (thus making people not use them). Think about what you want here. You have an application, your dream platform thing. It connects to a remote server, downloads some code written for it, and runs it locally. That code talks to an API provided by the dream platform that lets it draw GUI widgets and take input, in a manner standardized across a bunch of platforms. It then (in my ideal world) uses the server it got the code from for storage. That is a browser. It's the same thing. All you want is a browser that uses Cocoa instead of HTML/CSS, and can store apps in a cache and run them offline. Which, don't get me wrong, is a great idea. It means throwing away backward compatibility with the web, but it's still a great idea. Thing is, congratulations, you're the ten millionth person to have this idea. It's not a bad idea, but it's by no means new. And the problem it solves is the same one that's how we got into the "stone age": distribution. Browsers suck? Great, make a better browser then. I'll download it. Probably even write apps for it. Just stop pretending it's a "return to desktop apps". (As for the iPhone, I think it's a long way from having "solved the distribution problem". Very onerous terms of service and approval process mean that most of the apps suck, and probably always will.)