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What desktop apps do you use?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: What desktop apps do you use?

#12

Post by tx »

------ Work ------

Eclipse, Visual Studio, Photoshop, WordPad, FireFox

------ Fun -------

Picasa, Excel, Quicken, RAW Shooter Essentials, Bibble.

The only "online application" I use is gmail :) So much for "everything is moving to the Web" hype.

Re: What desktop apps do you use?

#15

Post by dfranke »

On Linux: Firefox, mutt, emacs, xchat, gaim, amarok, skype, gimp, LaTeX, Mathematica, VMWare.

On 'doze: Firefox, Visual Studio, Quicken, OpenOffice.

The only one of these that I'd like to replace with a web app is Quicken. Buxfer looks promising but it's not nearly there yet.

Re: What desktop apps do you use?

#16

Post by nostrademons »

danw wrote: post #7
larkin wrote: post #6

BTW, why do you want to know that? :)

To know which web apps need building next! If a lot of people are still using a desktop app when it can be made a web apps you've got to wonder why..

How about a web version of VMWare? Then I could run Firefox, inside of VMWare, inside of Firefox, inside of VMWare, inside of Firefox...

Edit: Oh shit... http://wubuntu.weejewel.net/

Re: What desktop apps do you use?

#17

Post by nostrademons »

tx wrote: post #12

------ Work ------ Eclipse, Visual Studio, Photoshop, WordPad, FireFox ------ Fun ------- Picasa, Excel, Quicken, RAW Shooter Essentials, Bibble. The only "online application" I use is gmail :) So much for "everything is moving to the Web" hype.

Or it could be that other people have moved to the web sooner than you have. ;-) Most of the planning and early design work was done over Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Groups, and Skype. (We mostly moved to AIM/phone/going to each others houses when we dropped from 5 founders to 2.) FictionAlley.org has a staff of close to 200, all managed through Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger. Even at work, I often find myself communicating over AIM with my cubemates. And I talk to my boss over AIM a lot more than in person, since he's on the other end of the building.

Re: What desktop apps do you use?

#18

Post by ryantmulligan »

ktus wrote: post #8
danw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To know which web apps need building next! If a lot of people are still using a desktop app when it can be made a web apps you've got to wonder why..

In that case, then how about a web version of emacs.

There already is one. It's called 9ne

http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/

Re: What desktop apps do you use?

#19

Post by tx »

nostrademons wrote: post #17
tx wrote: post #12

------ Work ------ Eclipse, Visual Studio, Photoshop, WordPad, FireFox ------ Fun ------- Picasa, Excel, Quicken, RAW Shooter Essentials, Bibble. The only "online application" I use is gmail :) So much for "everything is moving to the Web" hype.

Or it could be that other people have moved to the web sooner than you have. ;-) Most of the planning and early design work was done over Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Groups, and Skype. (We mostly moved to AIM/phone/going to each others houses when we dropped from 5 founders to 2.) FictionAlley.org has a staff of close to 200, all managed through Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger. Even at work, I often find myse…

No kidding. :)

Is this thread about working or talking? Surely it's hard to collaborate with people using desktop applications without an internet connection.

The point I was trying to make is that "death of desktop" is a myth. A new buzzword, invented to get more PR for whoever is NOT developing "desktop software".

While harsh reality is that there are applications and there are web applications. And we all make our money using "desktop" software every day. Moreover, lately it become accepted (and even hot) not to pay for it (apache, mongrel, linux, eclipse, ruby interpreter, PHP, photoshop, firefox, internet explorer, even freakin BIOS). And proclaiming it "dead", while being 110% dependant on it, is at least superficial.

And if you ask people why they build web apps, the answer will not be "because desktop is dead", but probably (if they are being honest) because regular software takes a lot more skill, more learning time, more development time and frankly it's just not as "sexy" these days. Sexy or not, it surely is not dead.

We depend on "desktop" so much that people often pay for it, while "web software" is almost never considered valuable enough to get people to open their wallets for. To me that's pretty pathetic: not to be able to charge for what you've built, and becoming yet another semi-useful parasite sitting on AdSense wellfare.

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