Article: Are web apps driving obsolescence?
January 27Design has improved across nearly every aspect of the web over the last decade - frontends, backends, web apps, desktop clients, widgets - you name it. And today, a bad UI is finally enough to kill an otherwise good product. We use a lot of sexy software.
But “intuitive” isn’t enough. Many web apps push me away for one simple reason: they’re #&$*ing slow!
I’m wondering - are web apps driving obsolescence?
A few years ago, it was common to say of an old computer - “Well, it’s still good for word processing, e-mail, and browsing the web.” Less so, today. Don’t get me wrong, of course - I love web applications and build them for a living. But I do believe that there’s a place for native code, and a place for Javascript.
In this screenshot, I’m running Safari 3, top (a process management tool), and Activity Monitor. When I open GMail, Safari’s CPU utilization spikes to a whopping 67.8%. Opening, deleting, or tagging a message produces a similar spike. Playing Flash video ramps up the fans. And web-based office suites throw my browser into a seizure.
But what’s under the hood? Am I running Leopard on an SE 30?
I use a 15” 1.5ghz PowerBook G4 (Aluminum; Spring 2004) with a fresh copy of Leopard. It has 2 gigs of RAM and a 160gb hard drive. I’ve added a second display, an iSight, a 500gb external hard drive, another 80gb 2.5” external drive, plus an outstanding keyboard and mouse. It’s three and a half years old, but still a great machine.
I’ll admit it’s not a speed demon. The front-side bus runs at an anemic 167mhz (by 2004 standards, even). I can’t run Windows, or fancy Intel code, and playing HD video is a struggle.
But otherwise, it’s very capable. When I’m working on a design/dev project, I’m generally using (at once): Finder, Safari, Shrook (RSS), iChat, Skype, Mail, iCal, iTunes, Coda, Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3, CyberDuck, TextWrangler, Terminal, and Billings. Even then, it doesn’t miss a beat.
I use GMail as an example because it’s highly-optimized and tuned for speed. But if something this well-engineered sends me packing, imagine the havoc wreaked by less-optimized and more-ambitious projects like Zoho or Adobe’s rumored web-based version of Photoshop?
Our attempts at replacing desktop apps with Javascript and Flash clones are bringing computers to their knees.
We’re now driving product upgrade cycles, and finding uses for older PCs is becoming more difficult.
This raises a few questions:
1) Who’s using our web app?
Maybe I’m an extreme example - a developer using a 3.5 year old system. But we need to ask - what are we expecting of our users? Even if they’re in front of a cheap-o Dell that rolled off the line last Christmas, there’s likely a load of cruft weighing it down (useless systray bloatware, toolbars galore, and well, Vista). How do our sites perform on average machines (meaning the fleet in active use right now)? Client-side performance tuning is critical.
2) Are Javascript and Flash really that great?
Call me a luddite, but I still love native code. It’s not cross-platform and it’s tougher to write, but it’s zippy. I’m not suggesting we ditch AJAX for assembly. But if I can run a few Adobe CS3 apps at once and GMail can overwhelm my PC, that says something. Is there a better way to accomplish the functionality we’d like to deliver (think Flickr.com + their desktop uploading apps)?
3) Should we be driving hardware upgrade cycles?
I don’t think so - maybe you do. But the environmentalist in me gets edgy when computers are considered “obsolete” after two years. That’s a lot of unnecessary e-waste.
4) When am I going to get a new computer?
May. Or whenever the new MacBook Pros come out. Or if you buy me one now. Four years is a good run.
What do you think? Are my expectations unrealistic, or are we stretching Flash and Javascript a bit too far? What are some alternatives?
January 27th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Scott,
While Javascript & Flash can be slower than native code, there is another dimension to web applications that can more than make up the difference: the ability to partition the application, so that CPU/memory intensive parts run on the server.
This can have a huge impact on perceptual performance for the user. For example, in the Zoho suite, complex functionality like pagination in the word processor is done at the server. In Zoho DB, indexing and querying are done at the server.
So an intelligently architected web app can breathe new life into old machines. I use Zoho on many old PCs (many will not run any kind of recent desktop suite) - with Firefox, they work fine.
Sridhar Vembu
Zoho
January 27th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Thanks, Sridhar.
For the record, I’m very impressed by Zoho and appreciate the work that your team has put into it. It’s a good product and I like your company.
The server-side processing is nice – that’s smart. Even then, there’s still quite a bit of overhead on the client (enough to seize Firefox or Safari during complex tasks, at least). But I can’t deny that web apps are breathing new life into older PCs, and even creating a new market for slow but networked ones. The Asus Eee is proof enough of that.
I suppose I fall outside of the majority of people who use desktop apps for simple tasks that are well-suited to web-based office suites. For tools that are critical to my productivity, I prefer apps that run locally, are independent of a network connection, and not subject to the reliability of someone else’s servers. But though web-based office suites are well-suited to average users, the fact that only 5% of Americans have tried one suggests that the target market is either unaware or uninterested.
Don’t get me wrong - I’ve got a lot of hope (and a lot invested) in the future of the web. I develop for AIR, design/build widgets, and some simple “pseudo-apps.” I’m just not convinced that re-creating every desktop app under the sun in Javascript or Flash is the way forward. Here’s the trajectory I see there:
Native desktop apps (> Y2K) –> web apps (2000-2005) –> offline versions of web apps (2006-date)
The fact that the current trend is to turn JS/Flash versions of complex web applications that replace their native counterparts back into desktop apps (via AIR, Flex, Flash, and WebKit, for example) makes little sense to me. It sounds CPU-intensive, not innovative.
I do love features like remote auto-saving, web-based backups of documents, online collaboration tools, and an access-anywhere paradigm. Those are fantastic and unavailable on the desktop for sure.
You’re free to disagree of course, and I’m sure you probably will. Who knows - I’ll probably feel differently once I get my hands on a new computer anyway ;-). Good luck to you and to Zoho - you guys are off to a very impressive start!
Cheers,
Scott Andreas
scott@phoreo.com
January 29th, 2008 at 8:05 am
You know, I haven’t experienced these problems. At least for now. As for web-apps, I use Gmail, Google Docs and Wrike [http://www.wrike.com] for project management and my system is not the newest one. Everything works perfect. Especialy Gmail integrated with Wrike despite the fact that our projects include some very heavy files.