s in 1993. Apart from these few, all we've seen are continuing improvements (albeit not unappreciated ones) to existing suites, accompanied by feature bloat.
"Who cares?," ask the Webmeisters. "With Hypertext Markup Language [HTML], Java, a browser, and plug-ins, shrink-wrapped software is a dinosaur."
The Web is a powerful tool, and it really has changed everything. The ferment in Web tools and server applications will obviously produce profound innovations -- probably even one of those legendary paradigm shifts.
But I'm not buying into the idea that server apps will completely replace desktop apps in this decade. The bandwidth and network reliability are just not there. And ultimately, whether software vendors write applications in giant hunks of C++ code and deliver them on CD-ROMs -- or write them in small pieces of Java code and wire them to us -- apps will still need to be more innovative.
Nor will custom development replace packaged sof
tware, even if the most optimistic scenarios about programmer productivity and code reuse come true. No company has the time or money to be its own sole source of software.
The greatest innovation in computing since the invention of the microprocessor has been shrink-wrapped software. The ability of computer professionals to deliver fast, inexpensive solutions will, for the foreseeable future, depend on the weaving together of custom and shrink-wrapped server and client applications.
My hope is that the industry will do something more than just add HTML converters to five-year-old apps. For example, seven years after Hewlett-Packard unveiled its ultimately unsuccessful NewWave shell for Windows, I'm still waiting for easy-to-use but powerful agents.
Want thankful users? Give them software that automates the repetitive yet complex tasks that consume most workdays. I would love something that I could "program" to gather memos, spreadsheets, e-mail, and whatever else I need to assemble monthly
reports.
My impression that the software industry has entered a slacker phase was reinforced by a recent trip to Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center. At PARC, you can see real innovation in areas as conceptually simple and practically difficult as viewing large amounts of data (an entire company organization chart, for example) quickly and easily. The kinds of inexpensive graphics hardware discussed in this month's cover story open up even more possibilities in this arena.
Maybe it's hard for concepts like data visualization and cross-application agents to clear the hurdles that large software companies put in front of new product development. I imagine that any product manager with fire in the belly still has to answer to company bean counters who ask, "Is there a $100 million market for the product this year?" I sure hope that someone out there is looking beyond today's installed base.
When I go to Comdex next month, I'll be looking for interesting and practical new desktop applicatio
ns to present our Best of Comdex awards to. (Vendors: See
http://www.byte.com/vpr/vpr.htm
for details.) Tell me what you need from shrink-wrapped software in our forum at
http://www.byte.com
; I'll carry the message back to the software industry.
Wanted: New Software
