{"id":852,"date":"2004-06-23T12:45:30","date_gmt":"2004-06-23T16:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=852"},"modified":"2004-06-23T12:46:06","modified_gmt":"2004-06-23T16:46:06","slug":"api-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/23\/api-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Applications and the API War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nJoel Spolsky’s essay on how Microsoft\r\nlost the API war<\/a> is typical Joel. It’s informed and well-written,\r\nand yet because some of the minor points and assumptions are\r\nunsupported, I don’t quite believe the conclusion. When I read an essay\r\nat Daring Fireball<\/cite> (which you should support<\/a>),\r\nthe points usually click into place. I can often see early on where\r\nGruber is going to take an argument and how he’ll get there. Then it’s\r\njust a matter of watching the exquisitely crafted dominos fall. Would\r\nJoel on Software<\/cite> read like that if I had a Windows\r\nbackground instead of a Mac background?\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nIn any case, my main problem with Spolsky’s argument is that he sees .Net\r\nas almost a Netscape 6 kind of \r\nrewrite<\/a>. But imagine if Mac OS 9 applications ran as first-class\r\ncitizens on Mac OS X and if Carbon had automatic memory management and\r\nwere accessible from a variety of modern languages. Now, maybe I’m all\r\nwrong, but I see this as good for Microsoft. They’ve maintained\r\ncompatibility for Win32 applications. If there’s no return on your\r\ninvestment for porting to .Net, then don’t do it. At the same time, it\r\nis now much more attractive for developers to write new applications\r\nthat will only work on Longhorn. Good developers like good tools; by\r\nproviding good tools (and lots of marketshare—large numbers of people\r\nwill<\/em> upgrade to Longhorn), Microsoft will ensure that Windows\r\ndevelopment remains vibrant.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nThe “MSDN Magazine” technologies that Microsoft is always trying to\r\nsell to developers sound like QuickDraw GX, OpenDoc, and PowerTalk.\r\nNice as these technologies were, Apple was never fully behind them. But\r\nby Spolsky’s own admission, the MSDN Magazine Camp has won. .Net is not\r\na novelty, but a bet-the-company initiative. And not a very risky bet\r\nat that—unlike sticking with Win32 forever<\/em>. Long-term, Win32\r\nis a lose, and not just because of the Web. Microsoft realized this\r\nbefore most people. There was no way to restore the old jewel’s luster,\r\nso they built a new one, .Net, to keep desktop developers locked in,\r\nand to try to lock in the Web developers as well.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nSpeaking of Web developers, John Gruber<\/a> has\r\nsome interesting thoughts about Web applications:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe persnickety little UI details I obsess over — these are nothing\r\ncompared to the massive deficiencies of even the best web app. But most\r\npeople don’t care, because web apps are just so damned easy to use.\r\nWhat’s interesting is that web apps are “easy” despite their glaring\r\nuser experience limitations.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nWhat I missed when I dismissed them a decade ago is that web apps don’t\r\nneed to beat desktop apps on the same terms. What’s happened is that\r\nthey’re beating them on an entirely different set of terms. It’s all\r\nabout the fact that you just type the URL and there’s your email.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

\r\nI have two things to say about Web applications. First, they will\r\ncontinue to only make sense for certain kinds of functionality. The Web\r\nis becoming more important, and yet desktop isn’t going away. This is\r\nbecause software isn’t a zero-sum game like mindshare is. New Web\r\napplications don’t necessarily mean fewer desktop applications. On the contrary, we’ll need more desktop applications just to help\r\nbuild Web applications, and wrappers like Watson<\/a> and \r\nNetflix Freak<\/a> to make them easier to use. These are, of course, markets that .Net is aimed at capturing.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nSecond, I think the interesting thing about Web applications is how\r\nthey play with our expectations. As bad as even the best Web\r\napplications are, they somehow feel better than non-native Mac\r\napplications—because they’re good for what they are. Exclude, for the\r\nmoment, the benefits of being able to use a Web application, with your\r\ndata, on any computer. Would you rather use Gmail or Chandler? Yahoo!\r\nCalendar or the original Palm Desktop?\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joel Spolsky’s essay on how Microsoft lost the API war is typical Joel. It’s informed and well-written, and yet because some of the minor points and assumptions are unsupported, I don’t quite believe the conclusion. When I read an essay at Daring Fireball (which you should support), the points usually click into place. I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}