4 ms·

If everything is to go to the web, then what is the point of an OS at all besides running a browser? If you answer FF OS or Chrome OS, then is it only a matter

If everything is to go to the web, then what is the point of an OS at all besides running a browser? If you answer FF OS or Chrome OS, then is it only a matter of time before they too try to distinguish themselves from each other, and face the same issues as native desktop OSes, and another layer of abstraction on top of the browser must be built to achieve the holy grail of "write once run anywhere"?

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
"Write once" is nice, but the real advantage of web apps is that the author has complete control over their product.
- pirateking 14y ago
  Domain seizures, server outages, flaky browser support for standards, client side javascript execution, text rendering engine differences... web pages give developers different control over their product - whether or not it is more or less control than native apps, who knows.
raganwald 14y ago
The native vs. web arms race reminds me of Movies vs. Television. To attract people into theatres, the movie people made movies wider, added stereo sound, &c. &c., always trying to keep the theatre experience better than the TV experience. But TV wins for convenience, cost to develop, and ubiquity, so there's plenty of content developed directly for television. It's not a perfect simile, but there's enough of a resemblance that thinking the Movie/TV history through stimulates my thinking about native/Web. JM2(anecdotal and inexpert)C
- pirateking 14y ago
  Interesting analogy. Here is where it breaks down for me: Assuming (Movies : Apps :: Theater : Operating System), then (Television : Web), makes some sense, but doesn't fully work. The browser (the current medium for interacting with the web), exists on top of the Operating System, but Televisions are not tied to movie theaters in any such way. On the other hand one obvious thing TV and the web do have in common is ads, versus up front cost of admission with native apps and movie tickets. I might be old fashioned, but I see native apps as tools. Sturdy things that you can count on to do a task well. Browsers are one such tool used for communicating over the web. I see the web as a medium of communication rather than a tool. I suppose this mental model is why web apps feel wrong to me.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Yes, the biggest problem that "write once , run anywhere" has always had is that platform vendors don't want it. It's only an advantage to underdog platforms, this is why Sun wanted it so badly but MS did everything they could to stop it in it's tracks. It's a lot more difficult to justify the purchase of a $2000 Mac if 100% of the software can be run on a generic Linux box for half the price. At least with FF and Chrome being open source and gratis rather than directly commercial some of this motivation is alleviated. It's also more difficult to put up a barrier to entry for a new incompatible feature if your competitor can look at your code base and re-implement it from there.
trhtrsh 14y ago
FF and Chrome[0] are both built to service the web, so they have no need to distinguish themselves from each other. [0] Except that a bunch of people at Google have forgotten this fact (or never learned it when they jumped over from Microsoft), and re-implemented the spiritual successors of ActiveX and JScript under new names.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

"Write once" is nice, but the real advantage of web apps is that the author has complete control over their product.

pirateking 14y ago
Domain seizures, server outages, flaky browser support for standards, client side javascript execution, text rendering engine differences... web pages give developers different control over their product - whether or not it is more or less control than native apps, who knows.

raganwald 14y ago

The native vs. web arms race reminds me of Movies vs. Television. To attract people into theatres, the movie people made movies wider, added stereo sound, &c. &c., always trying to keep the theatre experience better than the TV experience. But TV wins for convenience, cost to develop, and ubiquity, so there's plenty of content developed directly for television. It's not a perfect simile, but there's enough of a resemblance that thinking the Movie/TV history through stimulates my thinking about native/Web. JM2(anecdotal and inexpert)C

pirateking 14y ago
Interesting analogy. Here is where it breaks down for me: Assuming (Movies : Apps :: Theater : Operating System), then (Television : Web), makes some sense, but doesn't fully work. The browser (the current medium for interacting with the web), exists on top of the Operating System, but Televisions are not tied to movie theaters in any such way. On the other hand one obvious thing TV and the web do have in common is ads, versus up front cost of admission with native apps and movie tickets. I might be old fashioned, but I see native apps as tools. Sturdy things that you can count on to do a task well. Browsers are one such tool used for communicating over the web. I see the web as a medium of communication rather than a tool. I suppose this mental model is why web apps feel wrong to me.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Yes, the biggest problem that "write once , run anywhere" has always had is that platform vendors don't want it. It's only an advantage to underdog platforms, this is why Sun wanted it so badly but MS did everything they could to stop it in it's tracks. It's a lot more difficult to justify the purchase of a $2000 Mac if 100% of the software can be run on a generic Linux box for half the price. At least with FF and Chrome being open source and gratis rather than directly commercial some of this motivation is alleviated. It's also more difficult to put up a barrier to entry for a new incompatible feature if your competitor can look at your code base and re-implement it from there.

trhtrsh 14y ago

FF and Chrome[0] are both built to service the web, so they have no need to distinguish themselves from each other. [0] Except that a bunch of people at Google have forgotten this fact (or never learned it when they jumped over from Microsoft), and re-implemented the spiritual successors of ActiveX and JScript under new names.