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Web Apps and Why Apple is Behind the Times

by Bud Parr on January 28, 2008

I just upgraded to Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s operating system. I didn’t think too much of the highly touted “300 new features” but one thing put me over the edge: Fluid.

One of the best things about Leopard is that you can use an application called Fluid, which allows you to create separate and independent browsers for Web apps. I suspect that it won’t be long before something like this is integrated into Safari because if anything seems clear to me at all in this brave new internet world it is that applications are moving online. The benefits are clear: 1) the ability to easily collaborate or share; 2) the ability for developers to seamlessly improve applications and respond to market demand; 3) The ability to use your data from one application in another; 4) the ability to access your data from any device without having to sync up.

If you’ve ever gotten your email online in Squirrel Mail or AOL or Gmail, then you’ve used a Web app, but those instances are only the beginning. Google is the exemplar here (though not alone – see Zoho) with their Google Docs, including spreadsheets, documents and presentations, all easily shareable among groups just like their calendar and the wiki pages built into Google Groups. What Fluid does is allow you to segregate those online applications into their own browser window completely independent of the one you use for actual browsing. To someone like me who is highly dependent upon Basecamp and Backpack for their workflow this seemingly small thing is a boon to the way I operate.

Synching between computers is (soon to be) dead

I’ve also given up on using Apple’s Mail and iCal programs – as compellingly elegant as they are – for the far better designed (functionally speaking) and more quickly evolving Gmail and Google Calendar. Synching is dead and Apple’s products are built upon a cumbersome model of uploading and downloading across users and computers. I get email from all of my addresses (4 or so for my various projects) and I can much more easily share calendars, at least with anyone willing to have a Google account.

This stuff is merely the beginning because with Web based apps you also get something developers call the API, which essentially opens up your data from one application to be used in another. Easy example is how I have my Google calendar embedded in another application (Backpack) that I keep all my to-do lists and notes in.

Now, truth is, Apple isn’t really all that behind the times. They have a Web-based version of their mail program, although you have to pay a membership fee to use it and functionally it’s still old school, but most importantly, I think the introduction of the iPhone, which primarily relies on Web-based apps for non-core functionality, and their super-thin and highly coveted by this tech junkie MacBook Air signifies that all you really need is a to get on the Web. Personally, I’m moving to “The Cloud” as techies call it and I’ll be writing more about that here soon.