[TheZenPsycho]

oh, iOS and Android are doing just fine, as of this moment. Check back in 5-10 years though.

Just how exactly do you archive that content anyway? Anything you "buy" on those platforms is not something you own. It's something you're licensing for short term use. Doesn't sound like a great outlet for culture to me. It sounds like a death trap.

[rimantas]

Well, how do you explain the fact that Web did not win on desktop? I am still puzzled why people think web should take over mobile for some reason, but never mention desktop.

  > Just how exactly do you archive that content anyway?

Why should I archive anything? I don't archive web pages I visit either.

  > Anything you "buy" on those platforms is not something you own.

I don't care if I "own" something. Owning for the sake of owning means nothing to me. If I pay for the book it is because I want to read it. If I pay for the music, it is because I want to listen to it. Even CDs I do own are now represented by their cloudy ghosts using iTunes Match. Why? Because they are always there. I don't have to walk with backpack full of CDs just in case I'd like to listen to particular song. I can get it on any of the devices I use. Yeah, I don't have a install DVD for every app I bought. I don't care. I change my phone: they are already there. I get new Mac: I go to App Store app and just click "Install" for every app I want to have on that machine. Maybe to some it is a death trap, I don't know.

[TheZenPsycho]

"Well, how do you explain the fact that Web did not win on desktop? I am still puzzled why people think web should take over mobile for some reason, but never mention desktop."

Define "win". From my point of view, the web has not only won desktop, but utterly dominated it, and relegated the rest of the OS to a mere substrate for webpages. The only things it hasn't really replaced are photoshop, final cut and protools. It's only a matter of time.

"Why should I archive anything? I don't archive web pages I visit either"

oh boy. Paging Jason Scott. Jason Scott on aisle 12.

" I don't care. I change my phone: they are already there. I get new Mac:"

I'm glad you can thrive only on corporately produced content you license for brief periods of time. Many people out in the world are not corporations, and produce things that they care about. Many use computers to do this. Most care about the thing they made, and not about the tech they made it with. And so it ends up in these closed off little data silos and proprietary formats- not only are these things not backed up, they can't be backed up.

And then those people die, and there is nothing left of that person except what they made on the iPad with iOS6. The apps the things live inside are not compatible with the newer iOS. When that iPad dies, it's like the father, the lost son, the missing daughter- they die for a second time.

But you know, it's good that owning that stuff doesn't matter to you, and therefore should not matter to anyone else.

ta.

[Joeri]

The web did win on the desktop. New desktop apps are web apps, except for clients to sync your files with a cloud service. The popular desktop apps all predate the rise of the web.

Also, having books and movies stuck in your amazon or apple account is convenient for consumption, but horrible for creation. You can't DO anything with that content. I've wanted to extract interesting stuff from books I own before and was forced to make screengrabs. If you don't understand what's wrong with the media rental model, go read "the right to read" by stallman.

[ldng]

It is already there ... as long as the provider allows it. _that_ is the death trap. You can download a file (and locally backup it), not a stream.

Well, yes, technically, we as tech savvy people could, but the commoners (not to say technophobics), they don't know how.

and that is how it is designed. You don't need backup, it's in the cloud. What happens when it is not anymore ?

It is not owning but rather preserving that is the concern. Is everything worth preserving though, I don't know.

[sigmaml]

It is not clear what you refer to when you say ``buy".

By the way, you have drifted away from discussing the technological aspects of the Web. This line of argument doesn't help establish why HTML/JavaScript/CSS are better.

[TheZenPsycho]

HTML can be archived. Backed up. Saved. Become a part of history.

Apps cannot.

That's why HTML matters.