June 1st, 2007
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs sound excited about Rich Internet Applications
I didn’t have a chance to watch all of the video from the D conference but I was pointed to part of the discussion in which Bill and Steve talk about software and I came away with the impression that both men were very excited about what the blending of the web and the desktop will mean for users. Bill Gates had the first quote I liked about leveraging the power of the desktop with the benefits of “the cloud”:
“It’s a matter of using that local richness together with the richness that’s elsewhere. As you look at the device that’s connecting to the TV set or connecting in the car, there are lighter weight hardware internet connections, but when you come to the full screen, rich, edit the document, create things…we’re nowhere near where we can be on making that stronger.”
(more below the video)
It was in a response to a question about whether or not the rich client was going to be important anymore and Bill gave an answer that fits very well with the RIA mentality. There are a ton of great things about the web and the cloud, but there are also great things about deploying rich clients to the desktop. For users, there are cases where being in a browser makes perfect sense, but other times, the richer, fuller, more complete experience that the desktop can provide is valuable. It’s not either/or. Steve followed up talking more specifically about the browser:
“People are figuring out how to do more in a browser, how to get persistent state when you’re disconnected in a browser, how do you actually run apps locally using apps written in those technologies so they can be pretty transparent about whether you’re connected or not. But it’s happening fairly slowly and there is still a lot you can do with a rich client environment. At the same time, the hardware is progressing to where you can run a rich client environment on lower and lower cost devices and lower and lower power devices.”
This is a quote that is extremely applicable today with the announcement of Google Gears. Browser innovation continues to be great and I think technologies like Silverlight and Flash really enhance what you can do inside the browser because you can create very rich, media intensive experiences inside it. But not only is the rich client still very powerful, the idea of mini-rich clients is becoming more important. The fantastic thing about RIAs is that they span everything from mobile devices to the desktop and take advantage of data in the cloud. In the video, Steve gives the example of Google Maps on the iPhone. Creating these great experiences and tailoring them specifically for the device is going to become more important. RIAs enable that and as the platforms get wider, we should be able to deploy these tailored experiences using the same media assets and very little code change.
Steve put it pretty well, so I’ll let him close:
“The marriage of some really great client apps with some really great cloud services is incredibly powerful and right now can be way more than just having a browser on the client.”
Yup, it’s a pretty exciting time to be a developer. Thanks to Jon for the heads up.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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