How much longer will operating systems really matter, even to Apple?

I've been speculating what would happen if my current Powerbook dies, and I'm forced to choose between ordering an old PPC architecture system and one of the first off the lines Mac Book Pro Intel systems. Even if you ignore the fact that Mac Book Pro is one of the worst cases of naming in a long series of confusing names, I'm still facing a tough choice on the surface.

Then again maybe that's not the case.  I was evaluating software today and got to look at software that was installed and ran as an application on my system.  Then I got to compare it to software that was hosted and worked through a web browser.  I just started using the hosted software and pretty soon I gravitated towards the hosted version. It was actually better software with more functionality.  It even felt zippier.  The user interface was very similar to what I'm accustomed to using with TypePad, the hosted blogging software that I use everyday.  I also have used other hosted programs such as Flickr which I still use for posting my photos.  There there is Writely which is available for word processing, Num Sum which does spreadsheets, Kiko which is for calendars and Furl whichused for storing documents. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

I believe strongly that faster connections and more intelligent programming make hosted software a strong contender for the desktop.  I think the question is how this will impact both Apple and Microsoft?  Will it make us less dependent on operating systems.  Already there are technologies in the mail world such as IMAP that make us computer independent when it comes to mail.  Why shouldn't it go one step further and let us be computer operating system independent?

I actually worked for a company, Webmail.us, whose whole business proposition is based on creating hosted software which offers a real alternative to system based software.   Of course the email works with my Apple mail program among other but it has other features built-in to the browser interface which are only available in the browser.  Webmail has a calendar, RSS, and a task list, all of which aren't in Apple's webmail solution.  Of course they aren't the only people doing this.  All you have to do is look at the popularity of Gmail which is doing for individuals what Webmail typically does for small businesses.

The improvements in web driven software are absolutely amazing.  However, it is one of those areas where Apple trails badly.  How long will it before other hosted software also reaches the same level of sophistication as our client email software?  Not long it present trends are any indication.

In the end, if web driven software keeps getting better and better, just maybe I won't feel so tied to a specific platform.  I think that's a good thing.

Of course having said all that I still don't see a hosted package that can yet beat Apple's iLife suite of tools so maybe there's still plenty of life in some desktop software categories.  That will be a good thing for Apple if they can make iLife better and better, since MS doesn't seem to even understand the iLife concept.

 

Comments

[Mark]

Oh, weird. This blog's been in my list of daily reads for some time now, and my company uses webmail.us for our mail (great company, btw!). I never connected all the dots until now...this blog, mentions of Roanoke, webmail.us, etc. They all just kind of orbited my VT mental space, never connecting as a cohesive whole. Good thing I don't work for the CIA, I'd suck.

[Deepak]

"In the end, if web driven software keeps getting better and better, just maybe I won't feel so tied to a specific platform."

True, but then you will be tied to your hosting service! I don't believe any of the hosting services will make it easy for you to migrate your data to another hosting service.

[ocracokewaves]

Actually I just been through this on web hosting. Since I have FTP access to my websites, I just recently used FTP to clone a site that I had at http://sobotta.macosx.com to ones that I have at http://sobotta.org and http://coastal-mountain.com .

I did this because macosx.com decided to get out of the web hosting business and stick with email and support.

Though the new sites where I migrated my macosx.com site to have different entry pages, I've moved all the data and pages over without any problems and relatively quickly.

Our company http://webmail.us migrates data for lots of customers so I'm not sure that data migration is a huge problem at least in my world.