> The Death of the Web?<p>...there is nothing like the smell of rotting corpses in the morning. But seriously the title suggest that this will be a one sided and pointless philosophic post.<p>> Here’s how it will happen.<p>This post is a prediction.<p>> Currently, the most sensible way to develop software and make money from it is as a web application.<p>Last time I checked Star Craft 2 was still a native application.<p>> It gets around the problems of piracy, distribution of updates, and it makes use of the awesome platform that is the web.<p>The author probably never heard of Internet Explorer and XSS.<p>> Sure, it is possible to make money (even large amounts of money) selling one-off software licences, but compared to selling recurring licences for a web app, it’s a dying model.<p>The author probably never heard of Photo Shop. Sure it's one off payments, but in the long run you will end up upgrading to the latest versions and it's not a web application.<p>> That’s very sensible, and I expect people to continue developing web applications in the future.<p>The author probably forgot the title at this point. I mean when I hear "death of the web" I think of all the web being gone for good.<p>> But, if you poke around web developer communities, you’ll see one obvious trend: almost everyone is either very interested in building some kind of iOS app, or is already doing so.<p>I really like the "obvious trend" part that tries to sell the phrase as exact science. How much is "almost everyone"?<p>> This seems to affect almost every web developer community, from Flash/Flex to RoR including Python along the way.<p>Very nice, but where are the data and the numbers?<p>> A lot of bleeding edge web developers use Macs, and a lot of them are lusting over iOS and want to build apps for it.<p>How much is a "lot"? What does "bleeding edge web developers" mean?
Why are they "lusting over iOS"?<p>> But for many, the web is a shortcut to avoid the problems of piracy and distribution. And the web is a shortcut with a lot of headaches. It’s a lot simpler to build an iOS/MacOS app and distribute it through the App Store than to run web servers and keep them up to date and build billing systems and maintain mailing lists and so on2.<p>This phrase seems to a suggest that the App Store fixes piracy issues.<p>> It’s a lot simpler to build an iOS/MacOS app and distribute it through the App Store than to run web servers and keep them up to date and build billing systems and maintain mailing lists and so on2.<p>A lot more expensive too: 30% of your selling price.