Re: [dev] Interesting post about X11

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 2:04 AM, Will Light <visinin_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> yeah, I'm aware that the stuff exists.  just earlier today I was doing
> quite a bit of fiddling around with the current version of audiotool
> (http://www.audiotool.com/), and it's pretty cool.  the potential is
> definitely there, but the point I'm trying to make is that these
> things are constantly playing catch-up.  the feature set that these
> browser-based apps are seeking to duplicate is the sort of stuff that
> was novel, say...10 years ago, but it's nothing groundbreaking from
> the standpoint of a professional music producer.  perhaps these apps
> will end up replacing the entry-level stuff like garageband or iMovie,
> but I think they will be hard-pressed to unseat Cubase, ProTools, or
> even newcomers like REAPER.

I'd hope that progress will be a little faster once the
application-core can be implemented in any language that you can
compile to "obviously safe machine code" (maybe even the same
application-core codebase used in the standalone product). But I think
you're probably going to be right, but for "utility to the expected
user" reasons rather than for any technological problem. The
interesting thing about browser-applications is for doing "task X" for
those people who don't do X very much at all. The majority of these
people will only benefit from functionality that you can present in
easy-to-understand-and-use-immediately ways, in contrast to
"use-it-everyday" people who will both install the application locally
and learn over time how to use subtle functionality. So I'd expect
that web-applications will acquire those "advanced" capabilities which
are basically automatic, but won't acquire the stuff that requires
sophisticated user understanding to use.

-- 
cheers, dave tweed__________________________
computer vision reasearcher: david.tweed_AT_gmail.com
"while having code so boring anyone can maintain it, use Python." --
attempted insult seen on slashdot