The Weekly Review

Web vs. Desktop: The Debate Continues

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time weighing the benefits of web applications and desktop applications against one another. With the influx of quality web apps over the past few years, choosing between two similar options is harder than ever.

There are several advantages to both. Applications hosted on the web give their users a greater degree of availability¹. Local applications installed on your computer give you better security and do not require a connection to the web. Also, in many cases, local applications provide better integration with the operating system.

Both options give some advantage over the other. The choice each person makes depends largely on a person’s proclivity for mobility. In any case, it can be hard decision. There are a couple of major concerns that I’d like to highlight by using examples of choices I’ve had to make recently.

Data Ownership

I’ve picked up some client work over the past few months. This meant I needed to track my time and send invoices. I started out using Harvest, with the free plan. Harvest turned out to be an excellent tool—tracking your time is simple with the built in timers and configuring and sending invoices was intuitive. However, once I picked up some more clients, the free plan was not enough since it only allows 2 active projects.

I had a decision to make: upgrade to and pay for a different plan with Harvest or purchase an application such as Billings. I chose Billings. Why? One word—control.

With a desktop application, you own the copy of the software that resides on your computer, as well as any data that you add to it. With a web app, there is a perceived sense of what I call ‘lack-of-ownership’. I say perceived sense because many web apps state in their terms of use that you still own your data and can remove it whenever you like. But when your data is sitting on their servers, it feels less like your data. Whether this is the truth or not does not matter—it’s about the user’s perception. And having the data on your own computer gives you a greater feeling of control.

OS Intergration

Another point where I’ve found a preference for local apps is with OS integration. Especially when it comes to Apple and OS X, as they have done a great job at integrating their iLife applications with the OS. Mail, iCal, Address Book all work well with iPhoto, iTunes etc. The type of behaviors you add to your workflow can go unnoticed until you attempt to make a change.

In my case, this was illustrated with the GMail web interface and Mail.app. I’m returning to work soon and will not always have access to Mail.app or my Macbook, so I was considering switching to using the GMail web interface only. That experiment lasted all of two days. It quickly became clear to me that being able to drag and drop images directly into a new message, run scripts in Mail.app via FastScripts, and the Address Book integration were too valuable to switch to the web interface full time.

The ability to access my email from any computer will be helpful when I’m at work or otherwise away from home, but my preference is to work from Mail.app.

The Shifting Sands of the Web

As I said at the start, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. But this week the issue became even more prevalent with the news that Rael Dornfest announced that he was going to work for Twitter and that Values of N products Stikkit and I Want Sandy would be shutting down. For users who had invested time and energy into learning these two innovative web apps, this must have been a shock². Now they have two weeks to get their data out and switch to a new application.

Do you think any of those people decided to go with a desktop application this time around? Now, this type of thing doesn’t happen every day, but the reality is that things move fast with the powers-that-be in Web 2.0. At least when you purchase an application, even if the developer(s) goes under, you still own your copy and the data within.

Update: Great timing—just after posting, I received an email that another web app, MyQuire, has been acquired and is shutting down their service on January 1st, 2009. As Gruber said yesterday, with the economy in it’s current state, this type of news could be common in the coming year.

I realize that I’ve sounded like I prefer one of these options over the other. But the reality is that it depends on the situation (as well as the person). There are instances where I use a web application over a desktop. Again, there are advantages to both, but my recent experiences seem to side with the desktop.

And the situation with Values of N will make me think even harder when considering investing time and energy using a web application.

1. With a web app, availability means it’s accessible from any connected computer running any operating system. Some might say that a desktop app gives better availability, for it is available on one computer as long as the computer is operational and does not require an Internet connection. Both cases are true, and what side you lean to most likely depends on your level of access to the ‘cloud’. [↩]
2. I certainly was a bit surprised to hear this news. I’ve used Sandy quite a bit over the past year, and love the idea and implementation—there is something about the idea of having a personable, quasi-realistic personal assistant that appeals to me. Hopefully Twitter and Rael have some plans to keep this type of innovation at the forefront of Twitter’s future. [↩]