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> Not until Google Docs does footnotes and cross-references and tables of contents and careful page layout, it isn't. LibreOffice does footnotes and cross-refe

> Not until Google Docs does footnotes and cross-references and tables of contents and careful page layout, it isn't. LibreOffice does footnotes and cross-references just fine and LibreOffice is 0 USD. Here's the thing - MS Office is innovative and still the best at what it does. But it's old and like anything old, it becomes a commodity. Adobe Photoshop is also innovative and still the best at what it does (by far). The problem that Adobe has though is that many Photoshop licensees are not professionals and can be served just as well by cheaper or even free software. Companies like Adobe also benefited a lot from piracy, as a lot of people ended up using Photoshop, even though not that many people can afford it. Also, what you're seeing here unfolding with web apps is only the begging. In relative terms, the concept of a web app is still young. Even in early 2000, people had no idea that they can have apps running in their browser and broadband / 3G / 4G is still not a reality in many parts of this world. The combination of cheap and easily accessible on any platform, without any lock-in whatsoever, is extremely powerful. Couple this with devices that are designed to be portable and always connected and you've got a killer that will cannibalize everything else. > The reality of modern web and mobile software is that a lot of it is cheap, and it should be cheap, because it adds only a little value and it isn't very hard to create it Things like Google Docs / Google Calendar / Google Maps / Twitter / Wikipedia give me a hell of a lot more value than anything a desktop app could. Are you saying that you could build these in a weekend?

Silhouette 13y ago
LibreOffice does footnotes and cross-references just fine Sure, and it's a set of desktop applications that run locally on your own computer. Did you realise you're supporting my position here? The combination of cheap and easily accessible on any platform, without any lock-in whatsoever, is extremely powerful. Couple this with devices that are designed to be portable and always connected and you've got a killer that will cannibalize everything else. We've seen thick client vs. thin client before, and no doubt we'll see it again. Today, however, we're still a long way from the utopia you describe. Things like Google Docs / Google Calendar / Google Maps / Twitter / Wikipedia give me a hell of a lot more value than anything a desktop app could. Are you saying that you could build these in a weekend? Well, you're obviously picking contrived examples, because most web applications aren't in that class. And of course no individual could literally build a replacement for those services in a weekend. However, it is interesting to consider some factors that would stop them: 1. Hardware resources and network bandwidth to serve so many users at once 2. Large volume of data behind the UI 3. Many import/export options, in some cases Notice that of those, only the third has anything to do with how hard it is to write the software itself, and even then it's not core functionality. Providing compatibility with existing data formats is often extremely expensive in terms of developer effort, which is part of the reason that competing with the likes of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite is such a high barrier and why incumbents tend to change their file formats every five minutes. On the other hand, if you were asking whether I could create a Twitter clone to share with friends at first and grow as friends-of-friends joined in, then sure, about a million people here really could write that in a weekend. The core functionality for most of the other services you mentioned could be implemented by a small team in times ranging from a few days to a few weeks, too. The most interesting thing about this, IMHO, is that it means the core functionality for software with a completely different approach to solving the same problems might also be implemented fairly quickly, and isn't the factor limiting competition and the advancement of the technology. We're being held back by lots of other factors, but most of them are driven by commercial or marketing considerations, not the technology itself.

Silhouette 13y ago

LibreOffice does footnotes and cross-references just fine Sure, and it's a set of desktop applications that run locally on your own computer. Did you realise you're supporting my position here? The combination of cheap and easily accessible on any platform, without any lock-in whatsoever, is extremely powerful. Couple this with devices that are designed to be portable and always connected and you've got a killer that will cannibalize everything else. We've seen thick client vs. thin client before, and no doubt we'll see it again. Today, however, we're still a long way from the utopia you describe. Things like Google Docs / Google Calendar / Google Maps / Twitter / Wikipedia give me a hell of a lot more value than anything a desktop app could. Are you saying that you could build these in a weekend? Well, you're obviously picking contrived examples, because most web applications aren't in that class. And of course no individual could literally build a replacement for those services in a weekend. However, it is interesting to consider some factors that would stop them: 1. Hardware resources and network bandwidth to serve so many users at once 2. Large volume of data behind the UI 3. Many import/export options, in some cases Notice that of those, only the third has anything to do with how hard it is to write the software itself, and even then it's not core functionality. Providing compatibility with existing data formats is often extremely expensive in terms of developer effort, which is part of the reason that competing with the likes of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite is such a high barrier and why incumbents tend to change their file formats every five minutes. On the other hand, if you were asking whether I could create a Twitter clone to share with friends at first and grow as friends-of-friends joined in, then sure, about a million people here really could write that in a weekend. The core functionality for most of the other services you mentioned could be implemented by a small team in times ranging from a few days to a few weeks, too. The most interesting thing about this, IMHO, is that it means the core functionality for software with a completely different approach to solving the same problems might also be implemented fairly quickly, and isn't the factor limiting competition and the advancement of the technology. We're being held back by lots of other factors, but most of them are driven by commercial or marketing considerations, not the technology itself.