It's not enough to list the things that web does well. There are many areas in which web hasn't caught with capabilities available for a decade in Windows or Mac
Just one example that is particularly painful for me: it's still impossible to build a high quality code editing component on web platform. There are many valiant attempts but none that approaches the speed, quality and convenience of the best desktop editors from 10 years ago.
Another one: you can't build an ssh client as a web page because there is not enough socket support. You can do it by going through your own proxy, but that's not secure from the user point of view (you could spy on his traffic without the user knowing it).
Those are just two relatively simple things that you can't do on the web and there's much more.
Also, the velocity of change in the iOS/Android/Windows compared to velocity in web is not in favor of web. The (only recently added) capabilities you cite are just web catching up with old technologies. Amiga 1000 was doing excellent sound in 1985. Windows XP had vector graphics in 2001 etc. There's nothing to be proud of that we get those things in 2011.
iOS/Android/Windows/Mac OS X are being evolved much quickly than the web. They improve on the strengths they always had over web (speed of the apps, more capabilities, new paradigms like touch) and incorporate the best features of the web (integrating cloud storage in latest Mac OS and Windows etc.).
Also, the recent increase is standardization is caused mostly because the problem outline by Joe has been partially addressed: Google stepped up as the "owner" of the web and most of the recent advances are driven by Google (web sockets, spdy, webm, html5 spec being maintained by a Google employee, V8 forced everyone to raise JavaScript perf etc.).
Standard process was a disaster for a long time when it was done by W3C with working groups populated by employees of big companies with conflicting agendas. All the recent good changes originate from single companies (most of them from Google, Canvas was done by Apple).
> Just one example that is particularly painful for me: it's still impossible to build a high quality code editing component on web platform. There are many valiant attempts but none that approaches the speed, quality and convenience of the best desktop editors from 10 years ago.
Cloud9 and nide are really pretty competent editors, just because someone hasnt built the one application in a way that satisfies you does not mean the platform is dying.
> Another one: you can't build an ssh client as a web page because there is not enough socket support. You can do it by going through your own proxy, but that's not secure from the user point of view (you could spy on his traffic without the user knowing it).
Just one example that is particularly painful for me: it's still impossible to build a high quality code editing component on web platform. There are many valiant attempts but none that approaches the speed, quality and convenience of the best desktop editors from 10 years ago.
Another one: you can't build an ssh client as a web page because there is not enough socket support. You can do it by going through your own proxy, but that's not secure from the user point of view (you could spy on his traffic without the user knowing it).
Those are just two relatively simple things that you can't do on the web and there's much more.
Also, the velocity of change in the iOS/Android/Windows compared to velocity in web is not in favor of web. The (only recently added) capabilities you cite are just web catching up with old technologies. Amiga 1000 was doing excellent sound in 1985. Windows XP had vector graphics in 2001 etc. There's nothing to be proud of that we get those things in 2011.
iOS/Android/Windows/Mac OS X are being evolved much quickly than the web. They improve on the strengths they always had over web (speed of the apps, more capabilities, new paradigms like touch) and incorporate the best features of the web (integrating cloud storage in latest Mac OS and Windows etc.).
Also, the recent increase is standardization is caused mostly because the problem outline by Joe has been partially addressed: Google stepped up as the "owner" of the web and most of the recent advances are driven by Google (web sockets, spdy, webm, html5 spec being maintained by a Google employee, V8 forced everyone to raise JavaScript perf etc.).
Standard process was a disaster for a long time when it was done by W3C with working groups populated by employees of big companies with conflicting agendas. All the recent good changes originate from single companies (most of them from Google, Canvas was done by Apple).