Just like how GNOME developers are only good at serving themselves, development communities and hackers, so do web application developers only make solutions that serve the group of people that act like little crying babies whenever there’s no Internet connection. (well, not really. Both serve other groups too. Of course.)
Truth is, and I’ll take any of those Web fan babies on a trip to reality in any city at any time for at least the next 15 years, that the vast majority of people during the vast majority of their time don’t have something that you could call an Internet connection.
Surprisingly those people also often have sex in the evening. Meanwhile the people crying for Internet connections usually don’t.
Choosing between real sex and an Internet connection is an interesting question for me, being a workaholic software developer. But in the end, my Tinne’s charms always wins the fight against my computer’s shiny Internet connection. Seriously.
I mean that listening music in my car using Last.fm is not an option. Consider this: With good music in my car and my girlfriend sitting next to me, I’m far more likely to please her than I would be in case I’d frustrate her with this “Buffering…” and “Connection lost” crap that would inevitably be the result of a Last.fm player in my car.
Guess what will get us at a cocktail bar leaving us with the right atmosphere? A car with a Last.fm player, or a car with a USB stick? (usually we use bicycles, because we are responsible young drivers, but anyway). A car that 90% of the times has this “Buffering…” thing would make her laugh about her funny nerdy boy the first time. But after ten times, I’m pretty sure my investment in her cocktails will be ruined by that piece of shit music player, in my car.
People who are not into computers don’t even get that first time for free from their female partners. A piece of shit music player is an instant failure. Meaning: they won’t buy it. That’s why you are not seeing Last.fm players for cars.
I mean that using Google Maps for car and truck driving navigation is only something the kind of architect that you want to ban from your software development company would propose. You need to focus on the road while driving. Please don’t focus on the millions of irrelevant accessibility and usability problems a web application like Google Maps introduces.
On top of that, there’s no way all of the highways and cities in Belgium would have reliable Wifi coverage for at least another decade. And Belgium is a wealthy Western country.
We ‘rich boys’ are not the only ones with cellphones. We are probably the only ones with super Internet backbones sticking in our arse, though.
I mean, without any of that Web 2.0 stuff are car GPS devices working just fine the way they work today.
Seriously … to say that all the future of computing belongs to the web, while neglecting the real problems mobile solutions are solving today already, is something only the worst kinds of wannabe architects and morons would say. In my opinion.
You really think I would accept that I can only listen to music with your iLast.fmPod device in the most crowded places of planet earth? Places like inner New York City are probably the only ones where, if you are extremely lucky, you could have a Wifi Internet connection. Even with that connection, Last.fm would still take minutes of buffering per song.
That’s why iPod is a success, and your iLast.fmPod wont be. Well, that’s not the only reason. The other reason is that people buy iPods for the same reasons why grown up people buy swimming pools: to make other people jealous.
Usually, they don’t download a free desktop for the same reason as why they invest in swimming pools. They download it because it’s the only way to make the piece of shit computer perform the things that help them achieve their personal goals.
The point that I’m trying to make is: most Web 2.0 applications suck. They solve one problem (deployment) and they introduce fifty clearly identifiable new ones. On top of that, they are not ‘free’ as in free beer either, right?!
They are the monopolist’s best friends! Microsoft’s monopoly will look like a baby compared to Google’s in a few years.
But don’t confront the Web 2.0 fan babies with those ‘problems’! They’ll just go “la la la”, “not listening”, “Youtube rocks”, “la la la”.
That’s fine, but then go out of the way for the people who will solve the real problems in the next decade.
Web apps work and will work where they work. They might even work great, sometimes. But they wont where they wont.