Surprise: Adobe is thinking something dumb

Adobe discusses moving all of their applications to being delivered via a web browser.

What the ----?!! An image editor (further: a video editor!) is a complex thing, and people buy more advanced hardware so they don't have to wait 10 minutes whenever they use the paintbrush tool. One reason people use Photoshop is because it is fairly quick. Moving to the web would cripple that functionality. There would be nothing left!

Why, Adobe, why must you become the maker of bloatware only after winning over the marketplace?

For some time now, local computer power - hard disk capacity, write / read speeds, processor speeds, memory - has been growing magnitudes faster than bandwidth.
Adobe's applications work with huge amounts of data and require significant processing power to do so.
Therefore, according to them, the right thing to do is to take these applications and make them limited by bandwidth rather than local resources. Ingenious!

I'm all for splitting client and server systems (just so long as one can still install and access the server on the local machine), because it means some really good flexibility. Look at the X window system, for example: ssh, piping the X server stuff, results in the best remote desktop experience available. (All user interface settings from the local machine, including fonts and theme, are reflected in the application being run remotely. No ugly desktop; windows are drawn individually, handled by the local window manager). Sorry about that bracketted tangent... My point is that the problem here is not the server thing, or even the Internet thing (though time will tell whether they understand that they can't centralize this stuff to a single domain, as opposed to giving users the server software), but the web thing.

Why are all these developers worshipping the web as an application development platform? Except for simple things like word processors, it is terrible!
There are so many lines of bellowing anger I could run down to attempt to justify my hatred of web "standards" (at least in their current use), but I'll leave it at that.

Okay, having stuff like Photoshop a tad Internet-facing could enable neat functionality, such as a growing brushes library. However, that functionality does not, and should not, require a web browser to do. These things aren't special; with a bit of work, you can get the same online functionality, in a stand-alone application, as available in a web browser, with far more freedom in rendering and without the molasses speed of a web browser. Heck, it's easier in a stand-alone application, since Javascipt is ugly, CSS is inflexible (tables in professional looking web sites: count them! They are everywhere, even where they valiantly attempt to use exclusive CSS), and clients continue to behave in quirky, unpredictable manners. With a native application, we have one platform and only one platform: The operating system. Sure, hardware compatibility has to be dealt with, but that is getting increasingly less difficult than web browser compatibility, since the hardware manufacturers have some respect for why standards are important and because the OS deals with that for us.
...And please, Lord, smite anyone who gets the "bright" idea to create a web-based operating system that abstracts browser incompatibilities via a thick layer of Javascript and CSS. At this rate, it is bound to be attempted, but it would be disgusting if such a thing received even a moment's attention.

I've rambled enough. Sorry. Back to the topic: Adobe, web applications. Discuss :)

Sounds like a money making idea to me ..... lets see pay $400 for a packaged software or subscribe xxx amount of $$$ a month/year ...hmmm I think I would pay the $400.

Everything's going to be on the web soon ... just get used to it.

Only if we "just get used to it". If we're daft enough to let them do it to us, of course they'll do it to us, because it gives them more leverage and more money. If we complain loudly and then sign up anyway, that'll be that. If we don't sign up to it, it will go away like any other "great idea" that no one wanted.

I don't believe everything will be on the web. A connection cannot be guaranteed no matter where you are. Hopefully all this will do is open up the market for some sharper, niftier programs - the smug corps are just waiting to be toppled - it'll only take someone with vision (and a good bit of software of course).

I think the migration to net-reliant computing is appalling, frankly, and I'd really quite like the ability to keep one's computing personal to be protected by statute rather than determined by the market. I think there are serious issues involved in corporate entities strong-arming consumers into living what are, essentially, networked lives -- it represents a disproportionate and wholly unnecessary level of control.

its gonna be like satellite tv

the soccer was free but enough people bought it so now everyone has to

Apps i use often, i prefer running on my system. Apps i don't use this often, why shouldn't they run in a browser before i have to install a few MBs? As long as the data which i'm generating isn't stuff which i would like to handle private i wouldn't have problems with that. Would be nice using Mathematica from time to time for instance but i don't need a full CD install lying on my harddrive all the time.

As for that web apps are slow this depends and is quite relative. They for sure are a bit slower due to the browser overhead but anything which lies beyond can run at either the same speed if it's part of a lib for instance of when we're thinking of tools like flash and unity is JIT compiled which gives you already a nice speed which should be good enough for a lot of things.

PC's were invented because we wanted to be free from the client-server model of the early mainframes. We wanted a PERSONAL computer on our PERSONAL desk. Why on earth would anyone want to go back to the bad old days is beyond me...

Barney

Wasted money on stupid ideas must pile-up in the tens of billions.

It's very clear why the big software *companies* want to: control. It is a lot more difficult for people to use hacked copies of software that needs to be downloaded directly from the manufacturer and continuously 'phone home' than it is to 'borrow' a copy that is used off-line.

It also opens up additional potential revenue streams by allowing you to have a subscription model for specific additional features, making more money in the long run.

For the consumer, it seems to be pretty bad news though.

I think its dumb, if you have to go online and run your apps off of the internet there are so many things that are going to get in the way.

At first when I read the title I thought you were saying that you would no longer be able to purchase physical DVD's but purchase a ISO you downloaded onto your HD.

Even this can be a nightmare. I recently wanted to buy a Autodesk training DVD for advanced normal mapping in games. They no longer sell Physical DVD's you pay for an electronic transfer with 30 days to DL.

The Zip Archive was broken at about 700mb and could not be extracted. There was no phone technical support, only email for the product, but you could purchase over the phone if you didn't trust the internet. Sure enough there was a tech support option on the phone.

40 minutes later I spoke to a lady that gave me another tech support number. I hung up and dialed the number, was tech support for a Antivirus Product!!!!

Called them again the following day waited almost an hour, guy says he will give me the number. Only there is no number only the support web page with the support email, and sales phone number. Turns out that Autodesk have no access to the files, they can only give me a higher quota of downloads. Autodesk Tech support has no access to tech support of digital river so there is nothing they can do for me.

Anyway, and found the exact same training DVD used on Ebay. What was supposed to be a convenient 1 hour wait became almost 3 weeks.

Anyway, I dislike purchasing anything thats direct download now, its just a pain. Plus adobe apps just arent that small. My internet downloads at about 180KB per second and I don't want to have to wait minutes to boot up photoshop or 3dsmax. They are slow enough booting right off my HD.

Just let 'em go online. Not exactly my style o' choice, but what can ya do..

You know what will happen?

Some geeky sourceforge treehugger will code a free Photoshop alternative that can be hotkey'ed and layout'ed to ape Photoshop exactly, using a script everyone can access. So long for Adobe.

As far as I'm concerned, piracy isn't the problem of the big companies, but all those geeky bedroom programmers copying their ideas and spreading 'em for free. Perhaps we once face the day where DRM'ed chips on your mainboard contain hardware that allows only software from big companies to run, simply because they had the funds to buy some expensive license -which the geeky bedroomcoder couldn't buy-..

In some respects, GIMP isn't too far off anymore. Its icons are getting to be a lot more pleasant, and the more I mess with it the more I am getting used to its user interface. One can rearrange its windows to mimic Photoshop pretty closely, too.
Still pretty weird, but it makes sense in many ways. Sometimes moreso than the former. (Though colour management is still nothing like Photoshop's).

Oh, and inGIMP has the web features Photoshop could only dream of: It phones home and it has a pretty user community ;)

Absolutely. If you settle for anything less than the best, that's what you're gonna get.

Because the young marketing execs who are coming up with these retarded ideas, aren't old enough to remember how bad it was, having to wait in line for 6 hours to find out you missed a ; on line 18, so your program wouldn't compile, so you had to try again, 6 hours later. Wasn't it AT&T who took down their old system in the early 1990's, and found a batch job that had been waiting to run since 1968? Funny times!

Yes. But we're blaming piracy just the same. In the same way it's never a parents fault when some kid shoots up a school, it's not the execs fault when products fail to sell.

Like ISPs and their poor quality, overpriced Internet connections?

Perhaps part of the problem is that many popular software apps (such as Word, Photoshop, Excel etc..), have reached a point of utility where they do everything the vast bulk of users require and so many feel no need to upgrade - which means falling software sales.

But if you can get people onto the idea of running the software off the internet, then you can start charging for basic access + other services - a sort of lease arrangement - and a new revenue stream.

As far as Word & Excel are concerned: Microsoft's biggest competitor is Microsoft. (Vista's main competitor is not OSX or Linux, it's windows XP. Office 2007's main competitor is not OpenOffice, it's Office 2000/2003. Microsoft in particular seems to be having a harder time every day to convince the public to shell out money for the latest and supposedly greatest version, when the old one is considerd 'good enough' by the vast majority of their customer base)

Anyway, there's more: the logical extension of having a web-based version of word, excel, etc. is online storage of your associated documents as well.

Any documents resiging on a Microsoft server (rather than your own) means that there's one more hurdle to ever switch away to a competing software suite, since the company in question literally controls your own data now.

The shift makes sense to me.

Yes. It doesn't help that a significant portion of them consider the newer version worse. Installing Office 2007 at work was my biggest mistake ever.

For a text editor, spreadsheet and database I won't expect many groundbreaking new features over the years and certainly not a large crowd cheering for those new features. But creative tools (photoshop, video editors, audio editors etc.) are never finished. It's not only about effects and quality, but also about the user interface and navigation, and those should be developed constantly. For a photoshop I'd expect new features regarding navigation and content management. How important are new effects when you have a plug-in system? For sure a new photoshop version would be welcome, whether it's from Adobe or from the bedroom geek.

I dont want to get used to it. I want to be in control of my apps and my data and be responsible for my own backups. I dont want some monkey in a data center somewhere having full admin access to my stuff. Whats to say he isnt some pervert who would distribute all my sons baby pictures?? Also, i wouldnt trust the security as far as i could throw an AS400 'minicomputer' if all the recent web2.0 datastealing problems are to be believed.

Its a very worrying state of affairs and i hate the sound of it. To be honest, i cant see any sensible computer users going for it, (except for those that only use their pc for social networking). Think about it would you rather use Microsoft office online for a whacky subscription for horrible laggy remote access & inevitable downtime moments, or download openoffice or something for free (or a one off fee) and have it fast, smooth and most importantly localised? - hard choice that.

I cant wait to try the 3dmax remote webbased client (not)

because its unfortunately one of the only true open standards available that can be run/interpreted on amost anything. Basically its going for quantity not quality, i wouldnt be surprised if governments are encouraging, praying & hoping for it too as it will be 1000000000 times easier to spy on people and buisinesses.

Tip: Office XP/2003 with the free Office 2007 Compability pack.

Same old look & feel, but add 2007 file format compatibility. No reason *at all* to 'upgrade'

Except I can't "downgrade" again. But thanks for the tip, I'll pass it on to everyone else. :o>

You couldn't even lift it, much less throw it. :o>

Actually I saw a demo years ago (10-15?) of SoftImage running in a browser (a browser written in Java no less) using VRML (this was before Microsoft bought it) - was quite impressive. Sure it was running on a state-of-the-art SillyGraphics workstation, but PC have done a lot of catching up in the last 10 years. Give it another 10 years or so and I'm sure we'll get there...

Well they can hope and pray all they want. An open standard is almost guaranteed to ensure privacy and prevent nosy government agencies from snooping were they don't belong.

Exactly :P

I was talking more about the data centers where its all stored. There are laws to protect privacy yes, but for how long (look at the way things are going) it is after all the government who decide the privacy laws anyway. Look at the situation with google in china, as soon as the government "asked" for info on political bloggers they just handed it over. Their reason "we must operate within the laws of the country of operation".

Nope. My data, my machine, my buisiness - web 2.0? bah, humbug :(

(with the possible exception of data i actually want to share like pictures of the last mad lads night out or something:)

There are three different beliefs out there:

1. Everything will be on the web.
2. Web applictions suck, a great app still is a local client.
3. Let's write hybrid software, "RIAs", using web technologies, but distributed as a local client.

I don't know about you guys, but I even hate web-based email systems. The only thing that I find acceptable to do via a "web app" is Internet banking. I know that this is somehow ridiculous when you look at the involved security issues, but besides checking my emails it also is the only thing that I do from basically everywhere, and it is the only application domain where the web based user interface does not bother me.

That takes me back to one other thing: I don't like web based application because they usually use HTML-based technologies. The only way to create a great GUI for a web app is... FLASH! Unfortunately, it is only mis-used for stupid banners and other animated advertisements. But hopefully with the adoption of Flex this will change.

Still, I want to be able to do as much as possible OFFLINE. And I want an OS-native user interface.

In other words: I want a real client, not a hybrid and certainly not a web app.

web based apps suck arse unless its for something inherently web based, like a timetable planner/contacts program.

Sure. But that's a failure of the political system, not technology. It's not technologies fault that the political (and by extension judicial) system is:

1) Inherently flawed as it assumes a static (and often religious) frame of reference, both morally and ethically.
2) As a consequence of the fallacy of this assumption, horribly out of date.
3) Neigh impossible to change without a violent and bloody revolution.
4) Plays favorites to big business, as they are the only ones able to afford lobbyists.

As I'm sure they would in America if they had some sort of child pornography service in countries that allowed that. Again it's a political problem that cannot be solved by technology. This ofcourse makes the fact that almost every politician (and their supporters) are raging technophobes, for whom technological progress will only be tolerated providing it suits their agenda.

Unless it's in Flash/Flex or?!?

There are no platform limitations that are inherent attributes of any type of software.

I 100% agree with you, which is why personal & sensitive data should remain fully within your control. - If there is no reason for anyone else to access it.

I see it as a good thing for the majority of software the average consumer uses moving onto the web: email, spreadsheets, that kind of thing. However, these sorts of things are pretty slow-paced and that's fine with the latency of a web app. I definitely think that it is a huge mistake to make web apps out of more intensive applications like Photoshop.

The day i get charged monthly/yearly to use a w.processor or spreadsheet is the day i blow the cobwebs off my grandmothers old typewriter, write my own or as a last resort use "wordpad" :P

Unless of course the 'fee' is < than a normal version licence fee over an effective product lifespan of 7 years of 'usefulness' (i strongly doubt that). I am still using some apps i still find useful for certain things, that are 10-15 years old! For example, I still rate Deluxe Paint II for quick low-res 8 bit work and still use it on rare occasions.

That said i still hate the idea of my data being somewhere else. To me its like storing the contents of your head in someone elses jar, in some unknown location.

There's other dangers in having sensitive and/or private info stored 'offsite' - such as prying and outright abuse by the employees tasked with maintaining these databases.

A couple of years ago (down here in New Zealand), it turned out Inland Revenue workers were selling confidential taxpayer info to debt collectors. You may argue that if someone owed money, then they deserved to be tracked down, but the IR employees were doing this for their own gain (they were being paid money by the debt collectors) and were in direct breach of privacy regulations. So it's not always the 'govmint' to be concerned about.