Web vs Desktop & Mobile: The pointless war

Oh boy. I've been really trying to restrain myself from writing this blog post. It feels like I write one like it once a year. It is the age-old (at least in internet years) argument that the web is better than the desktop or the desktop is better than the web.

Now in my usual post on this topic I pull the web idealists from their pedestals and inform them the web will never replace the desktop, and smack desktop idealists around the head and tell them they can't expect their apps to live on an island any more. The conclusion is always the same: the real power is in the internet, the web and the desktop are just two different ways of providing an interface to it, each with pros and cons.

However, what made me crack and write this post is another post by one of the aforementioned web idealists. So this post will instead be rebutting his post with a vengeance. The author is Peter-Paul Koch and the post can be found here: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/11/apple_is_not_ev.html

Stupidity

So any post where the title calls a group of developers 'stupid' obviously is going to be full of bias and errors, so let's go through them.

It also supports JavaScript geolocation, which is (I hope) only the first step towards true device APIs that will give JavaScript developers access to phone functionality such as the camera, text messaging, the address book, and more. I’m assuming Apple is working on all that because it’s the next logical step.

That is a very poor assumption for one very important reason. Most people don't want to have their address book read in and text messages sent (at their expense) to all their contacts asking them to visit a website, after they themself visited that website. There's a very good reason websites don't get access to system APIs and this is it.

Safari’s support of appcache makes it possible to store the Web app’s core files on the iPhone itself, so that it only has to download the data. Thus mobile connection problems can be avoided.

But then you need a cache of the data stored locally and the ability to modify the data locally, meaning your web app needs to be run locally. What we have there is a mobile app built with web technology.

Best of all, if you want to update a Web app, you just put the updates on your Web server. There’s no need to wait for Apple’s broken approval process. iPhone developers are stupid because they’re wilfully ignoring all this.

This may be veering off slightly, but 90% of the issues with the App Store process are due to the length of time. If you got a response within 24 hours of submission and you could get a speedy response when you appeal then most of the issues would go away. So yes a web app fixes that by allowing you to update on your server.

However, you then have to pay for that server. Many web developers forget two key things about desktop/mobile development:

1. Scalability isn't an issue as you gain more processing power with each user, on the web you reduce the processing power each users gets with each new user.
2. You aren't having to also pay for the computer the application will run on, nor the resources it will use.

These two facts lead to one highly important factor for a lot of desktop/mobile developers: your expenses are lower.

Now this isn't saying that you should therefore never make a web app. Web apps are needed in many cases, but they aren't the be all and end all.

More Stupidity

Still, the graphically simple games such as sudoku and chess, the interactive shopping lists, the dictionaries and bible citation apps, the beer appreciation apps, the firmware Yahoo weather app, and most importantly all social network clients could have been written as a Web app without any loss of quality whatsoever. (Most have fairly little quality to lose in any case.)

This I have to strongly disagree with. If the web provided an equal user experience to the desktop then why do desktop clients exist? Why do people buy Lighthouse Keeper when they could use Lighthouse? Why am I writing this in MarsEdit instead of my blog's admin panel? Why are most of the tweets I see proclaiming "the end of the desktop/mobile" posted from desktop/mobile Twitter clients and not the web UI? The fact is that the web is a LONG way off matching the user experience that can be delivered on the desktop/mobile

In addition to avoiding the App Store and its insane policies, such Web apps would (mostly) work in any modern browser, whether desktop or mobile, and users of other phones or even of old-fashioned desktop computers could have used them, too.

Oh dear. The issue with this argument is that you have to build to the lowest common denominator. Sure you can have your site gracefully scale back. This blog you're reading will have a drop shadow around it and rounded corners. Of course in other browsers in may not have these. The issue is that Peter wants to have it both ways, but he can't.

You can't on the one hand laud the advanced features of Webkit in Safari (Webkit in other browsers can vary widely) while on the other hand say that your apps will work in any browser. People talk about the web as being the platform, but really the platform are the rendering engines such as Webkit (Safari, Chrome, WebOS), Gecko (Firefox, Camino) and Trident (IE), and they all just happen to support the same languages for some stuff (which is no different to Windows, OS X and Linux all supporting C).

Developers like their stuff to reach as many people as possible, right? That makes sense from both a business and an ego perspective, right? Then why do iPhone developers jump through burning hoops as nasty as the App Store approval process just to make sure that their stuff can only be used on one single platform instead of many?

That depends. Can I offer the best user experience while supporting these multiple platforms? Building a general web app that will run well in any browser is much like building a desktop app using Java, it often leads to an inferior user experience as you can't provide a consistent feature set and use advanced features of each OS it runs on. Personally I'd rather develop for one platform and build a kick ass application than develop for a wide audience on multiple platforms and build a mediocre application.

The Web

The plan failed. Jobs Himself ordered His developers to create Web applications with Web standards, but a deafening silence ensued. Then He hurriedly thought up the App Store. Too hurriedly, as it now turns out.

It's far-fetched to believe that Apple only thought up the App Store after they saw the reaction to the announcement of making web apps for the iPhone. The amount of time to build the APIs, the developer tools, the infrastructure, work out the marketing and the legal issues probably means they'd been planning this since before the first iPhone was released.

The "build web apps" announcement felt more like a stop gap measure. More a case of "stop hounding us about developing for the iPhone, if you really MUST develop for it right now then we've added a few small things to make it easier to build a web app for it".

I remember the ecstatic reaction to the announcement, because it was the very first time a major industry leader mentioned Web standards in a major presentation.

Oddly, I remember the reaction being more along the lines of "WTF?", but this goes to show the different reaction of the two communities.

Besides, Apple does not reach out to Web developers at all, and Web developers respond by not bothering with Apple beyond making sure their Web sites work in Safari.

So the fact that Webkit is probably the most open part of Apple means nothing?

I believe that Apple is working towards its own heavily CSS-centric Web OS, certainly for mobile, possibly also for the desktop, and that this evolution has been slowed down by the energy devoted to the App Store as well as the complete lack of outreach.

And I believe that they're also working on an iPony and odd as it may seem, I think that the iPony is more likely. The reason is that desktop tech has many advantages over web tech, the primary one being that it is much richer in both APIs and toolsets.

Arrogance

The fundamental problem on the iPhone is not Apple’s App Store approval policies, but the iPhone developers’ arrogant disdain for Web technologies. That’s nothing new. Most X developers (for any non-Web value of X) live in mortal fear of the browser as a development platform.

What we see here is what Peter and many other web idealists believe: that web technology is the best tool for every job. The fact is that it isn't. The only people who live in mortal fear of the browser are those who get caught up in the idea that web technology is somehow the holy grail of software development.

After ten years I am fucking tired of the “Web development is not real programming” bullshit that the arrogant bastards in “real programming” are spouting because they’re too frightened to learn something new. Fuck those condescending, ignorant, self-important, stupid, blind, fearful pricks. Fuck them real hard. Where it hurts.

As someone who has done both web and desktop development, I can see where the "web development is not real programming" idea comes from. The APIs and tools for writing, debugging and testing web technologies are a long way behind the tools for desktops. Those technologies that have the most advanced tools are ones that many web idealists deplore, such as Silverlight and Flash. It is very much real programming, it is just programming with a relatively young set of tools and APIs.

As for the arrogance that Peter talks about, any amount of arrogance on the part of desktop developers over web technologies is matched by the arrogance of web developers over desktop technologies. For every "web dev isn't real programming" quip there is a "the desktop is dead" remark. It's an eternal pissing match over who has the best lego set, completely missing the point that you can usually build something much better using the best pieces of both lego sets.

The myth

The poor, oppressed iPhone developer suffering under Apple’s heavy App Store hand is a myth invented by these developers themselves because they’re too fearful to look beyond their “native” fetish. The Web is patiently waiting in the wings like a spurned bride, quietly promising to solve all of their problems for them if they’d only look at her.

If the web really was some magical beast that would produce money from nowhere, cure cancer and give everyone a blowjob then that might be the case. But the thing is that web brings with it a whole new set of problems and doesn't really fix the most important one, which is how to build the best application possible. The web is a screwdriver to the desktop's hammer. They're both tools and if you're building a great house you'll need both.

The last heading

OK so the rebuttal is done. But it is worth reiterating for both sides of the argument: I don't believe the desktop or the web is the one true platform. The one true platform is the internet. The future isn't web apps or desktop apps or mobile apps, but all 3 that can work together. Web apps are best for when you're away from your normal computer and just need to check up on something. Desktop and mobile apps are best for providing a rich user experience and raw speed.

Everyone agrees that most of the processing needs to take place on the client, this is why most of the new web technology seems to focus on getting web apps "off" the web. This is simply going the other direction to desktop apps, where they are getting connected to the internet.

It is best to use each platform to their advantages. This is why I have Code Collector Pro, which focuses on organisation and using code snippets, as a desktop app but I have codecollector.net, which focuses on sharing, as a website. It wouldn't work anywhere near as well the other way around because they would both be playing the weaknesses, not the strengths of their platforms.

And this is why it is a pointless war. Neither side will win because the major strength of one side is the fundamental weakness of the other. They aren't at odds with one another, they complement one another perfectly. And when the idealists on both sides of the spectrum wake up to this we'll be able to stop the bickering and start making some great apps. And I'll be able to get through a full year without the urge to write another one of these bloody blog posts on the topic!

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