Applications on the Web/Cloud the way to go? over Desktop apps?

Question

i am currently a mainly web developer, but is quite attracted to the performance and great integration with the OS (eg. Windows 7, Jump Lists, Taskbar Thumbnails, etc) something like WPF/C# can provide to the user, improving workflow and productivity. privacy and performance seems like a major downside of web/cloud apps compared to desktop apps.

applications on the cloud/web

• work on the go, increased popularity of smartphones/netbooks
• majority of users may not benefit as much from increased performance of desktop apps, eg. internet surfing, word processing, probably benefit more from decreased startup times, lower costs and data on the cloud

desktop applications

• increased performance benefits power users like 3D rendering, HD video/photo editing, gamers (i wonder if such processing maybe offset to cloud processing)
• integration with OS increases productivity (maybe such features can be adapted to a web version? maybe with a local desktop app to work with Web App API)
• more control over privacy (maybe fixed by encryption?)
• local data access (esp. large files) guaranteed and fast (YouTube HD fast enough most of the time)
• work not affected by intermittent/slow/availability internet connections (i know this is changing tho)

what do you think?

Answer 1

What happens when you are on a plane? Or a train? or in a box with a fox?

There are places you may go where you do not have access to the internet, and it is nice to be able to fall back onto desktop applications that do not rely on the cloud. (I prefer services like dropbox, Where I can sync my files to the cloud, but I can still function without internet)

Answer 2

Some of the bullet points you have put in Desktop Applications are no more exclusive to Desktop Apps :

• Web Apps now can make use of 3D hardware acceleration, see WebGL
• Web Apps now can use client side persistence with HTML5

As for the Web Apps cons, what I am not sure if it's doable as of now, is the ability to drag an items from the desktop, and then drop it on the web app on the browser. For example to upload files, someone might just want to drag items from the desktop folder, drop them in a container inside the web app, instead of going through the File Chooser.

work not affected by intermittent/slow/availability internet connections

If the app makes use of client-side persistence, the user can work with the app and the data offline, and only upload it to keep it in the "cloud" when internet connection is available.