When doing research about developing applications on both the Windows Desktop and the Windows Phone environment, the question comes to pass: shouldn't you "just" develop a web application?
When raising the question whether applications should be hosted on "a server" in "a datacenter", or whether everything should move to "the cloud", it's important to keep in mind that nothing´s new under the sun.
Let me tell you about a pendulum.
The pendulum is not a myth. It is a fact. From the dawn of computing, there has been one. To put it accurately, there have been many. The pendulum I'm talking about is a pendulum of doing thing local (on your own computer) and on a server (your "local" computer being only the terminal). Sometimes it swings to one side, sometimes to the other. Look at this:
- During the 60's, every computing action took place on a local computer. Those were the days, my friend :-).
- During the 70's, mainframe-terminal combinations became the way to go. An enormous leap, because from a regular workplace, you could access those large machines!
- During the 80's PC's became powerful enough to do everything themselves
- During the mid-90's till the '00s the Web Bubbles showed up. Everything was on the web and should be moved to the web. Google was booming
- The '00s: Mobile devices became more powerful (Windows Mobile and Palm - iPhone only appeared in 2007). However the need for synchronization rose, the actual content was stored locally on your phone and PC. (Even with the first iPhone in 2007, this was still the case). Remember TomTom, running on top of PocketPC and having all maps on board?
- The '10s (starting around 2008): Although mobile phones became even more powerful, the increasing number of devices per user and the availability of affordable broadband wireless networking lead to a shift back: smartphones started to interact directly with their servers, storing and downloading only the data needed to fulfill the user´s need. The rise of the cloud moved even more applications "back to the server".
