Future of Desktop Software

With the purchase of Writely by Google a useful question was raised. Are the Microsoft Office apps going to get useless? Well, maybe.. or maybe not! It all depends on how the trends are going to shape up in future. Such questions were asked at a Supernova 2006 conference hosted by Wharton. A lot of things were discussed. Kevin Lynch from Adobe Systems had some interesting views!

The current “chasm” between the web experience and the desktop experience is central, added Kevin Lynch, chief software architect for Adobe Systems. He predicts an eventual blend of the two that will be “magic.” One challenge in achieving such magic, according to Lynch, is making web-based applications act like “first class citizens” on the user’s computer by freeing them from the constraints of the browser — such as the difficulty of moving data between applications or websites, for example. Applications built on the web will continue to be hosted on the desktop, he said. “But, we want to be able to go anywhere and use anything — to take information from any site, and run it on any local machine. So, we need to build web-powered applications in a consistent way.”