Ask HN: Is commercial desktop software dead? I am currently working on a tool for marketers which is a "traditional" software application for Windows, OS X and Linux. Checking Product Hunt, Hacker News and Reddit I have the feeling everything B2B is web based these days. Is that true? Shall I be worried I am working on a project which is already dead before even announcing it? |
Previous discussions on this topic:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11748812
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4280463
However, there are still some things that can't be done with web-based products, and for those things people still use desktop software, like Photoshop. A marketing tool doesn't sound like one of these applications.
Why Linux? I wouldn't expect lots of marketing people to be using Linux on the desktop.
The tool I am working on is mostly focused on analytics and data analysis, so even if the main target market is marketers I would not compare it to mailchimp or buffer.
Linux comes for free as the tool is developed using Qt & C++, but yes, probably not a top platform for marketers.
Desktop apps are good if you are actually making a use out of desktop capabilities.
They can also be good for low maintenance low churn apps if they don't need any servers. Because you can publish a working program and then forget about it until the next version (not babysit/monitor servers 24/7).
But if it's not making much use out of desktop, and needs servers to function then why bother with desktop anyway?
If something can easily be a web app I'd say it's the better choice. Quick safe easy access and you get to control it however you like (like pushing lots of updates every week).
For developers, though, I can see why webapps are so much nicer to work with. (See patio11's blog post quoted by drdrey.) So I would posit that the defining metric is complexity: if your software is really complex (and/or doesn't need a server), make it desktop. Otherwise, go for the web.
For example, fairly recently I've come across a business application that's been implemented as a Java desktop app and deployed via Java Web Start because its main geographic target areas are - sometimes remote - locations in Southeast Asia where often you have flaky Internet connectivity at best.
Hence, deployment and occasional updates can be done online but daily use for the most part happens entirely offline.
SaaS, by contrast, is typically easier to monetize, distribute, and update; it can also be easier to build, depending on functionality and UI complexity.
Everything else is going web. Even native clients are often boxed web UIs due to the cost savings of developing the UI only once.