On Web, Internet, and Cloud
Web is not an internet. Cloud is. “Cloud” is simply new name for the internet, that’s all it is. For me, “cloud” sounds simpler and fluffier, so I’ll stick with it. Web, on the other hand, is a little part of the cloud. Little, but most commonly used. So common in fact, that Google is trying to make you believe that web is a internet and cloud is something mystical somewhere above there.
Following article expresses very personal thoughts. That is what I think and what is right in my opinion.
Web
Web is some kind of 3rd party platform on top of your operating system. It’s like Adobe Flash and Java, with predefined purpose to serve you information in some multimedia and textual way. Web applications are something new and wrong, they are just normal applications connected to cloud but with a wrong user interface. Web had a clear UI guidelines, and those guidelines were made to serve documents on you computer from the cloud. That’s all.
Today, companies like Google are trying to shift everything to cloud… I’m sorry, to the web. That’s also wrong. I see the goal where they are going with this: to make computer act as a simple terminal to the cloud (yes, cloud), but on web? That’s like huge experiment without knowing what will happen. I don’t like it.
Cloud
“Cloud” is a big buzz word today. But in essence it’s good old internet, including storage, remote computing, services, web, everything that’s not on your computer is in cloud.
OS Native Apps
What’s wrong with them? I never had need to have Photoshop in my browser, neither I wanter my word processor to be in web-browser, neither my iTunes. BUT! I always wanter my Photoshop and Word as well as music to be in sync on every device I use or own.
OS Native App + Cloud
What wrong with Twitter on Mac or PC? It’s been ages since I last opened Twitter in my web-browser, as well as my mail. It seems native OS apps work great with cloud without even touching web. Are they slower? No. Uglier? Oh no. Less user friendly? No. So why should I have my iTunes user interface in my web-browser? No reason. But I’d like it to sync music with all my devices, via cloud.
iCloud
That brings us to iCloud. Which in my opinion is most correct approach of bringing cloud to our lifestyles as a consumers. Apple, with huge help of iPhone developer community, realized that using OS native apps with cloud services are much more efficient and usable that everything just ported to a web-browser. I really hope that iCloud will work properly (and not like Mobile.me which was rubbish) because it’s the only correct approach I’ve seen in many years of implementing syncing and remote storage services.
I love native OS applications.
Web is for documents, not apps, live it alone.