I agree that there are some pretty bad rich apps out there that you run into once in a while, especially ones that were contracted out to the lowest bidder. Th

I agree that there are some pretty bad rich apps out there that you run into once in a while, especially ones that were contracted out to the lowest bidder. The pet theory is wrong, by the way, it was not mobile that led to the rise of rich clients. When I worked on AppJet and EtherPad in 2007-2008, the rich client wave was ahead of the mobile wave. Round-trip latency is significant when interacting with a UI, even if it is just 100-200ms. It was obvious that if you could deliver a desktop-quality app that worked on every platform and didn't need to be installed, that that was the future. I think it's worth focusing on the actual harm of certain ways of writing rich apps (e.g. breaking navigation).