[AccessD] Is it over for desktop apps?

[Rocky Smolin]

I would guess that the number of Americans who need internet access for a
cloud app would be in a business that would have internet.  So the number
of Americans in the market for a cloud based app for their business who do
not have internet access would be very small.  83% of Americans have
smartphones, so for those business platform apps, the user market would be
almost universal in this country.

The cloud can be loosely defined as "someone else's computer'. For someone
who dials in remotely using a laptop or smartphone to their company's
server, then, their data is effectively 'in the cloud' - it's not google's
or apple's server but their own company.  Still, the market apps accessing
non-remote data, would I suppose be shrinking, not growing.

But I haven't done any research on tyhat.

r

On Sun, Sep 11, 2022 at 11:35 AM John Colby <jwcolby at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are millions of Americans that have zero access to the internet.
> There are BILLIONS of human beings with zero access to the internet.  Nuff
> said.
>
> On Sun, Sep 11, 2022 at 12:17 PM Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Recently I came across (on Quora) the following remark regarding fully
> > fledged desktop applications. "Personally I think those days are nearly
> > over and it would be best to move to the cloud straight away."
> >
> > Although technically I am retired and have been so for a number of
> years, I
> > spent a good number of years developing desktop apps, primarily in Access
> > but also in a couple of other languages.
> >
> > The term "desktop apps" includes both strictly desktop (both FE and BE on
> > the same machine) and apps that live on a small network, with the BE
> living
> > on a server. I have never written an app that lives in the cloud, even
> > though I have a license to MS 365. Mostly my experience with the cloud is
> > off-site backup. I tend to develop locally, so to speak, and then copy to
> > OneDrive frequently.
> >
> > I'm curious as to your experience.
> >
> > 1. Do you develop apps for use on the cloud? If so, approximately what
> > percentage of your apps live there?
> > 2. Assuming that the client of interest has an internet connection, is
> > there any reason to develop your apps *not *for the cloud?
> > 3. Are there shortcomings (specifically with Office in mind) to
> > cloud-based-apps that desktops apps do not suffer? I mention Office
> because
> > many if not most of the apps I've written in the past couple of decades
> > have consisted of pieces written in Access, Word and Excel; a few of
> these
> > are quite elaborate, involving exports to Excel first, then creating
> tables
> > within Word documents, formatted according to standards mandated by
> various
> > provincial governments, and in Canada that may also involve translation
> > from English to French.
> >
> > Let's stick to Access, for the moment. I have only a little experience
> > deploying apps to hundreds or thousands of users. Mainly I've worked with
> > smallish corporations or government branches with, give or take, a
> hundred
> > users in a few cities, all connected to a Windows Terminal Server. My
> > thoughts back then were that the FE should reside locally, on each box;
> and
> > I took the time to create a self-extracting EXE which would deposit the
> > latest install or update locally, with its connection to the server baked
> > in.
> >
> > Bear in mind that in a couple of months I'll be 75yo, and so have
> probably
> > --nay, certainly -- fallen far behind current thinking and technologies.
> So
> > I'm asking for you to help me patch and paddle this leaking canoe.
> >
> > Should I be thinking exclusively in terms of the cloud? Is it essentially
> > over for local servers (one per office, approximately)? If so, does that
> > mean that the market for local servers is over? What advantage is to be
> > gained, if any, by having a local server, as opposed to running it all on
> > the cloud?
> >
> > And now we return to the classic question, albeit with a cloudy twist.
> > Should the FE reside in the cloud, as well as the BE?
> >
> > And finally, can I copyright the name McCloud? Of course, I dropped the
> "e"
> > and I know it! I am also confused by the spellings of "McX" and "MacX",
> > wherein "X" stands for anything from "Donald" to "Hoolihan" to
> "Robertson"
> > and any other letters I've left out -- oops, cannot omit Mathew Matthew
> > McConnaughey. There are names of towns in Wales easier to spell than
> > Matthew's surname. It's only fair: you can't be that handsome and have a
> > name like "Bill Smith" or even worse, "Arthur Fuller.
> > *Back to the Cloud*, the original subject of this admittedly incherent
> > message. As so accused, I plead Guilty to the charge of Incoherence. In
> the
> > past month, I have suffered two strokes, and while still able to speak
> and
> > type, walking has become an issue. As William Burroughs said, "If I'd
> known
> > I were going to live this long, I should have taken better care of
> myself."
> > (Being a fussbudget, I corrected his spelling.)
> > New idea for the next Olympics: Aquatic Spelling Bees. The contestants
> wear
> > waterproof earphones and listen to the words to spell, and then enunciate
> > them underwater -- something similar to two divers trying to communicate
> > distress while two hundred feet beneath the water's surface. That could
> be
> > serious fun!
> >
> >
> > --
> > Arthur
> > --
> > AccessD mailing list
> > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
> > https://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd
> > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
> >
>
>
> --
> John W. Colby
> Colby Consulting
> --
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>