Google Gears; Web technology is that much better

Google Gears makes me wonder about some things. I understand how web applications are better in scaling and client distribution terms. It’s kinda like using a mainframe or a thin client. However, they suffer from a massive user experience disadvantage compared with well written desktop applications.

Gears has made a big splash in the online community, but I wonder if that’s just because people want to develop with what they know. Why is the idea of using Web technology to develop desktop apps actually attractive? Have the standards of developers dropped or has application development gone down nasty turn which just makes it too inflexible for today’s market?

I wonder how much this will actually change. Me? I’m learning Cocoa because I want to rapidly build rich apps for my Mac that are as capable as the OS not the browser.

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mac, applications, desktopapplications, googlegears