Three months ago, I made the switch to a Mac after years of using PCs. I’d used Linux off and on, but for the most part had stuck with Windows, from 95 through 7. It was almost amazing how easy it was for me to switch to the Mac; within hours of unboxing it, I was back at work as productive as ever.
Much of the difference this time was the fact that I rely on web apps for much of my computing life. Sure, I still love native apps; that was half of the reason I wanted to switch to the Mac to start with. But the cloud has helped us keep our data and it’s now easier to use the apps you want with your data than ever before.
The Lock-in Effect
One of the most feared things in computing is lock-in. During the ’90s and early ’00s, most people felt tied down to Microsoft’s ecosystem. If you didn’t have Windows and Microsoft Office, you wouldn’t be able to work with most of the files you’d come across. There were plenty of other viable computing platforms, from the Mac to Linux, but few dared to switch. Those who did often found it difficult to work together with others.
Platforms are still important, and most of us have a list of applications we couldn’t live without. Adobe’s Creative Suite and Microsoft Office still after all these years would be at the top of those lists for many people. The difference today is, with web apps and on cross-platform native applications, odds are you can work on almost any platform without any hinderance at all.
Today, Your Data’s Home is the Cloud
It’s taken awhile to get there, but today, I could accomplish 90% of what I do from any random computer on earth, assuming it had a decently fast internet connection. When I started college 5 years ago, I religiously saved my homework files to Skydrive so I could access them anywhere. Soon after, I switched to Dropbox, keeping my entire Documents folder synced to the cloud.
Today, though, I add fewer files to Dropbox every day. It’s not that I don’t like Dropbox, but I’m now saving more data than ever directly in web apps, just as most of us are. Sure, much of it still gets created and saved in native apps, but it’s also synced to the cloud. Text notes go in Simplenote. All of my email, calendar, and contacts are in Google Apps, as well as any collaborative documents. iWork office files are in the new iWork cloud. Most of my writing is initially written offline, but gets saved to WordPress, Assistly, or other web apps I use for business. Even when I create stuff in Photoshop, it’s usually designed for the web.
Native Apps, Web Ready
Odds are, you’re already using many web apps for your work and personal life. But, even with native apps, many are cross-platform and have a web app so you can keep working anywhere. Evernote, Simplenote (with 3rd party apps), Wunderlist, Reeder and other feed reader apps that are powered by (Google Reader)http://web.appstorm.net/tag/google-reader/], [Kindle, and more all have native apps for a number of platforms as well as web app backends. Even Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple have been building cloud backends for their software suites: Photoshop.com, Office.Live.com, and iCloud.com.
And if you don’t have the correct native app, chances are web apps can help you make the leap. Microsoft Office, for example, doesn’t run on Linux, and you might rather use iWork if you’re switching to a Mac. But you can use the Office Web Apps on either one, which at least lets you view documents you receive from others in full fidelity and make sure documents you make in iWork or LibreOffice will look good in Office when you send them.
The Danger of Web App Lock-in
If anything, the only concern today is that your files might be more locked into the cloud than they ever were to your computer. Many web apps don’t offer export options, and even if they do, the export files might not be as versatile as the files you’d save from a native app. Plus, most web apps make it difficult at best to move your files around; they’re really designed to keep your data right there in the web app.
That’s why I’d love to see more web apps integrate with Dropbox or iCloud directly. Instead of operating like isolated silos, web apps should make it easy to move your data around. It’s not possible today, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could add all of your favorite web apps to your Dropbox.com account, open any file in any of them, then have the changes saved back to it?
Conclusion
We’ve come a long ways from the ’90s, and while native apps are still highly important, the web has made it easier than ever to switch computing platforms. Native app developers are not forced to play nicely with web apps, so the responsibility has been passed. Now, web app developers need to pay the same attention to exporting and integrating with other cloud storage options, so users can use the tools on any platform that work best for them.
Have you recently switched to a new computer or operating system? Was the switch easier for you thanks to the cloud? I still couldn’t take the ultimate leap and only use a browser, but it is definitely nice to be able to take advantage of the best apps, whether web or native, and still keep my data safe and secure.