J_RaD - 2:14 am on Aug 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

Microsoft didn't see the demise of desktop apps coming as things migrate to the cloud

uh what.... im just going to go ahead and quote someone else...

But it turns out the Chrome OS vision of the future, where all we need is a browser, is also wrong. The consistency and familiarity of OS interfaces makes those nascent "web designs" look childish, and our browsers still struggle with simple concepts like drag-and-drop, responsiveness, native code, hardware acceleration, and multitasking. With the desktop becoming an internet native — a direct client of the cloud instead of a reluctant collaborator — I think the browser paradigm will begin to look like a clunky proof-of-concept for many of our favorite services. This has been happening for a while with Twitter, where native apps provide a vastly more convenient and powerful method of dealing with the onslaught — even as Twitter attempts to beef up its web app with exclusive, sexier "functionality." More recently, Google has bought Sparrow, a purveyor of desktop and mobile email applications, which I see as a clear admission by Google that trying to make a Gmail app that's simply a window to HTML5's version of events was a total failure.

web apps suck.