Yeah when web apps started to take off, circa 2000 I'd say, the big selling point was the ease of deployment and update and the ability to have a single code base for multiple OS's. Also, up to that point application installation mostly consisted of going down to uber electronics store and buying a box with the app burned on a CD.
However, not too much later I found many instances of mom, pop, buddy and sis having no troubles downloading and installing apps like iTunes and, ironically, web browsers; regardless of their operating system. Also, these installed apps phoned home to keep themselves up to date.
Fast forward 10-15 years later and there's a significant increase in internet traffic but the increase is do to thick clients on mobile devices and now it's the same issues as before; how to package and deploy on multiple platforms and maintain a single code base. But the thing to not is users don't seem to mind installing and uninstalling apps if the interface they're using makes it easy.
And that brings us to present day where mobile development has pretty much ditched web apps but desktop development is still holding on to web apps. And it's rather hilarious to watch the schizophrenic evolution of web app technology over time regarding who much of the code to put on the client vs the server.
All that to say, I agree; technologies exist to build multi-platform client applications that reach back to servers for data if they need to. And I wish the whole application in a browser thing would just die and browser would return to what they were designed for, displaying hypertext.
However, not too much later I found many instances of mom, pop, buddy and sis having no troubles downloading and installing apps like iTunes and, ironically, web browsers; regardless of their operating system. Also, these installed apps phoned home to keep themselves up to date.
Fast forward 10-15 years later and there's a significant increase in internet traffic but the increase is do to thick clients on mobile devices and now it's the same issues as before; how to package and deploy on multiple platforms and maintain a single code base. But the thing to not is users don't seem to mind installing and uninstalling apps if the interface they're using makes it easy.
And that brings us to present day where mobile development has pretty much ditched web apps but desktop development is still holding on to web apps. And it's rather hilarious to watch the schizophrenic evolution of web app technology over time regarding who much of the code to put on the client vs the server.
All that to say, I agree; technologies exist to build multi-platform client applications that reach back to servers for data if they need to. And I wish the whole application in a browser thing would just die and browser would return to what they were designed for, displaying hypertext.