4 ms·

All this "the web will win" is bad bad bad. Call me old-fashioned, but it seems like I am one of the few people left who actually cares about standalone apps w

All this "the web will win" is bad bad bad. Call me old-fashioned, but it seems like I am one of the few people left who actually cares about standalone apps which I can download to my harddrive and then even use in the case that a) i don't have internet connection b) the product was killed by the company or c) that the company itself still exist. Just think about the idea that all arcade machines like pacman were "cloudbased". I am pretty sure all those games would have been lost long ago and nobody would be able to pay them in mame today. What I'd prefer to see is "the internet-harddrive based on a gitlike technology wins" (something like encrypted remote ZFS with full versioning and some additional database capability for metadata). Either I host this internetdiscs on my own or I just rent some space at some random provider. Or I do both and do automatic synchronisation between them for backup purpose. When it comes to most tasks, the only role the internet should play is to synchronize my data between all of my devices. I never want to be in the situation where I depend on a website of a flshy new startup which might be dead in a few months. (I hope my intent is clear, I am on my phone right now and hate to type long texts this way)

avenger123 13y ago
Curious question. How many apps do you have that are not games and very niche that don't require an internet connection? I tend to find that the most useful apps require a connection to login, refresh data, etc.
- yoodenvranx 13y ago
  I did not say that apps should not use the internet at all! For updates, new content and so on some reliance on the internet is totally fine, I just hate apps which will not work offline altough there is no logical reason to do so. I uninstalled several singleplayer games just for this reason. The only apps which I regularly use on my phone are: - sms/messages - email - whatsapp - webbrowser - alien blue for reddit - weather app - look up contacts/phone numbers - camera app / panorama app - sudoko style puzzle game - a simple app to track my spendings - some other small single player games So the first half of the list obvioulsy requires internet connection but the rest should be strictly offline except for updates and perhaps new content. And I am not so much worried about my phone apps but more about programs which I need for work on my deal computer. Right now I am using Word/Office a lot but somehow I am afraid that in a few years there will only be some cloud based online version left.
  - wlesieutre 13y ago
    But don't you really wish that your camera/panorama app were a webpage? Then you could use the same one across all of your devices, and you wouldn't need to install anything! And instead of doing local processing on your phone to stitch things, it could send the photos out to a datacenter for stitching and get a finished image back! And if you're out of cell range, maybe it could just cache any camera data and let you see the finished images later when you're back online. And it'd be great for disk space, because everything lives in the cloud and instead of saving videos locally you just have to wait for them to load and use a bunch of bandwidth every time you want to watch one. Yeah, me neither.
    - yoodenvranx 13y ago
      I travel quite a lot with trains in southern Germany and the internet connection there is _bad_. So no, I don't want my camera app to be a webpage. Or if you hiking in the mountains and you want to make a paborama but you realize that there is no connection? Or i travel to asia for a few weeks but I can not access my camera webpage because roaming costs are too high? Or apple bought my favorite camera app and now the app/webpage is gone (I am looking at you, Snappycam)? For a lot of applications it totally makes sense to augment its functionality by some internet connecticity, I am just against all apps/webpages which force me to be online even tough main functionality of this app would work without internet.
- weavie 13y ago
  PDF reader and Kindle are probably my most used apps.
- ihaveajob 13y ago
  Priority Matrix does a good job working offline, even without an account.
- hornetblack 13y ago
  I have an app called TripView. It gives public transport information and you can plan a trip using it. It does use internet for updating and real time information. But the main reason I use it is because It doesn't need an internet connection to work, unlike Google Maps or 131500.com.au.

avenger123 13y ago

Curious question. How many apps do you have that are not games and very niche that don't require an internet connection? I tend to find that the most useful apps require a connection to login, refresh data, etc.

yoodenvranx 13y ago
I did not say that apps should not use the internet at all! For updates, new content and so on some reliance on the internet is totally fine, I just hate apps which will not work offline altough there is no logical reason to do so. I uninstalled several singleplayer games just for this reason. The only apps which I regularly use on my phone are: - sms/messages - email - whatsapp - webbrowser - alien blue for reddit - weather app - look up contacts/phone numbers - camera app / panorama app - sudoko style puzzle game - a simple app to track my spendings - some other small single player games So the first half of the list obvioulsy requires internet connection but the rest should be strictly offline except for updates and perhaps new content. And I am not so much worried about my phone apps but more about programs which I need for work on my deal computer. Right now I am using Word/Office a lot but somehow I am afraid that in a few years there will only be some cloud based online version left.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  But don't you really wish that your camera/panorama app were a webpage? Then you could use the same one across all of your devices, and you wouldn't need to install anything! And instead of doing local processing on your phone to stitch things, it could send the photos out to a datacenter for stitching and get a finished image back! And if you're out of cell range, maybe it could just cache any camera data and let you see the finished images later when you're back online. And it'd be great for disk space, because everything lives in the cloud and instead of saving videos locally you just have to wait for them to load and use a bunch of bandwidth every time you want to watch one. Yeah, me neither.
  - yoodenvranx 13y ago
    I travel quite a lot with trains in southern Germany and the internet connection there is _bad_. So no, I don't want my camera app to be a webpage. Or if you hiking in the mountains and you want to make a paborama but you realize that there is no connection? Or i travel to asia for a few weeks but I can not access my camera webpage because roaming costs are too high? Or apple bought my favorite camera app and now the app/webpage is gone (I am looking at you, Snappycam)? For a lot of applications it totally makes sense to augment its functionality by some internet connecticity, I am just against all apps/webpages which force me to be online even tough main functionality of this app would work without internet.
weavie 13y ago
PDF reader and Kindle are probably my most used apps.
ihaveajob 13y ago
Priority Matrix does a good job working offline, even without an account.
hornetblack 13y ago
I have an app called TripView. It gives public transport information and you can plan a trip using it. It does use internet for updating and real time information. But the main reason I use it is because It doesn't need an internet connection to work, unlike Google Maps or 131500.com.au.