We have over a quarter-century of offline-ONLY desktop applications to draw on. and though unsurprisingly a quick google search for UI design patterns doesn't

We have over a quarter-century of offline-ONLY desktop applications to draw on. and though unsurprisingly a quick google search for UI design patterns doesn't show anything except the latest web ui patterns. . . . seem to contradict each other. Sure, offline (or at least intermittently connected) apps have been around a long time, but as you so rightly (unsurprisingly) found, that kind of thinking (patterns) has been surpassed by more trendy ideas. Part of it can be blamed on the SDK and API designers; they implicitly tell us "your app will be online all the time". Part of it (as you pointed out), is due to general ignorance of history. I think a large part of this is that large swathes of new programmers (only in it for the money?) have jumped on the apps bandwagon on phones (online by default), offline be damned. That, as the authors argue, should be fixed.