Why the WebOS won't happen!

Interesting post by Jason Kottke on a so-called “WebOS”. Speculation about such an operating system, that is powered over the web, has always been around but seems to pick up whenever Google releases something new, like Google Desktop 2 last week. Granted, Jason does talk about having local applications too, but then I question how things are really different than what we currently have.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – it’s not going to happen! So, whenever you feel the urge to dream about an operating system powered completely over the web, just refer to this handy list of realities:

• We don’t have “wireless everywhere”, so sometimes you need to be able to take content offline.
• Games need horsepower – processors, memory, graphics, etc.
• I can do a lot with photos on Flickr, but it’s not even close to replacing Photoshop. Applications like Photoshop need (extensive) local resources!
• One interface is dumb! What about viewing my content on a mobile device? Or on a device with a tiny screen? Or in my kitchen? Or in my car? Accessing everything through a browser is absurd. Web services solve this problem by allowing many rich interfaces to use the same data, with a high level of code re-use.
• Security, security, security! It’s a lot harder to secure everything when it’s all online!
• Privacy, privacy, privacy! How can you really be sure no one else is looking? If the OS is on the Web, there’s no longer a power switch.

There are probably more reasons! Have any you’d like to add?

Read: Jason Kottke