I Believe in Network Clients

At an interview last week with John Markoff, I made a statement that seems to have generated some concern over my sanity. I said, "I don't believe in thin clients." Let me start by saying I started my technology career with a company that built client (ie, desktop) software. I care a lot about user experience. And for that reason, I've always thought the words thin client were oxymoronic. No two words have ever been less comfortable sitting next to one another - one cannot have a client without at least some functionality or 'state' on a device, and the girth of that state (as measured by memory or storage or application footprint) directly correlates to the interactivity of the client. In simple terms, TV's got more interesting when they sprouted set top boxes. Radio got more interesting when iPods came along. And cell phones blossomed when you could download games and ringtones to their resident Java platforms. (Cache is king - although it can be stolen (think laptop), but I'll leave that cryptically hanging for another blog). Industry convention says that apps written to browsers are defined to be "thin." But by that definition, thin really equates to "using someone else's runtime environment" - in that the browser itself has to be present for the service to be rendered. And last I checked, browsers require operating systems and windowing environments. Not exactly thin. So in my book, it's inaccurate to say Go...

Date: November, 08 2006
Url: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/i_believe_in_network_clients

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