The #1 worry
people talk about when using web-based apps is that they don’t work if you’re offline.
No argument there, though platforms like Google Gears and Adobe Air are (slowly)
starting to make that less of an issue. The rapid proliferation of WiFi
hotspots and increasing affordability of 3G wireless data subscriptions will
probably make being disconnected a thing of the past even before Gears or Air
really catch on anyway. But yes, for now, if you’re out of range of an Ethernet
jack, out of range of a WiFi hotspot and don’t have a 3G plan (or are in a long
tunnel), you can’t organize your pics on Flickr or update your leads SalesForce.com.
The #2 complaint,
however, makes less sense to me. People seem to loose sleep fretting over not
being able to access their data if their web app provider goes offline. I’m not
saying it doesn’t happen... when Twitter, Amazon S3 or Gmail go down for a few
hours, it’s front-page news and the pundits rub their hands anxiously and list the
perils of using an application that stores your critical data on someone else’s
servers.
All of this
fretting implies, however, that your data is always accessible when it’s on
your local PC instead of being in the cloud. Ummm… <virtual hand
raise> … When you install a new printer driver and it breaks the photo
organizer software you’ve been running for the last year, you can’t access your
data until you figure out what happened. When that game that your nephew downloaded from a
Russian website that uses DOS fonts forces you to bring your PC into the shop
to get cleaned up, you might not have access to your data for days. When (heaven
forbid), the microscopic head in your hard drive gets one micron too close to
the disk surface and you lose it all, you REALLY don’t have access to your
data. IT departments inside of large companies spend their days running around
helping users who can’t get at data on their local machines for one reason or
another.
Sure the
above are all infrequent events, but when you consider that most Web apps go
down for less than a few hours a year (when you may or may not actually be even
using them), well, if you’re going to lose sleep over something, worry about
not being able to get at what’s on your hard drive (especially if you use a
droppable, stealable laptop).
It has to
be said, as well, that in all of the mini-catastrophes listed above, you’d be
able to jump onto another computer and keep working if you were using a Web app.
Web apps
are run by companies (like mine) that live and die by uptime. If our app goes
down, you can bet that someone competent is working like an idiot to get it
back up again. When your local word processor won’t launch for no apparent
reason, no-one’s scrambling to fix it except you.
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