But I’ve been frustrated for years with WinMacLinux. I value speed and responsiveness before features or “trendiness”. In addition to security and privacy concerns, I think the web-based things are taking us back to the 386 and 486 era when desktop PC were painfully slow (which hasn’t changed much btw). That being said, I have the same feeling about “web apps”: I’m somewhat unsettled.

The pods from Cupertino have always been too expensive for me when I was really into music players and had the time (riding the bus/tramway transportation system to and from my university) and I don’t own any Apple product that would require iTunes. I pretty much agree with you except about ITunes, just because I don’t use it. I want ALL my data, ALL the time, local and if I need to sync that’s fine but I want local apps and local data. The worst, the web based CRM system our company uses. Seems to me that’s the best example yet of the benefits of desktop app merged with the internet. The best, sorry, here comes the Apple praise, iTunes…a desktop app that taps into the internet transparently to deliver content.

Maybe I’m just too old fashioned and desktop operating systems are just too ingrained in my way of thinking this 43 year old, but I just struggle to understand the web based apps, office suites, etc. And for those here who think I’m just an Apple fanboy, Apple doesn’t seem to have figured it out either as I try Mobile Me every year or so and am underwhelmed by Apple’s attempts to merge desktop and web too. But their web strategy a complete and total mess. Windows 7 is impressive technology and they deserve props for it. To Microsoft’s credit, way to go recognizing that it isn’t a fit. His offerings were what I’ve railed against for years, difficult to use, too technical solutions that require too much effort to learn and deploy to be worth the effort. And Microsoft’s Mesh offering…unintuitive and convoluted! I was there for Groove too…much the same, unintuitive, convoluted. I remember having to setup the Lotus Notes client for my father, a pretty technically savvy businessman in the day and it took every ounce of smarts (or dumb luck more likely) to get him connected to the company’s servers. Lotus Notes, years ahead of its time granted, but in use, clunky, unintuitive, slow, convoluted. Ray Ozzie is clearly more brilliant than I’ll ever be, but brilliance doesn’t translate into business success.

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