Will you be able to open your projects from today, then?
I think web only is a really compelling way to get someone to try a product, but I’d much rather install a tool like this. Unless you could host the site yourself, of course.
Web only does bring with it the notion of web scale rendering. Cloud render farms are already a thing, so it would be a compelling feature. Lots of video acquisition is already cloud based, so the footage is already there. There are still plenty of times where the render stage takes enough time that rendering on my local single machine is not pleasant.
Except I have to have those servers to run it on. It's the basic premise of why cloud vs onPrem. I didn't think that really needed to be stipulated at this level on this particular forum.
Winamp would like to have a word with you :) Granted I'm using the latest release from 2018, but I still sometimes load up v2.x released in 1998 just to show people that 25+ year old software still works just fine... even the AVS visualizer and Shoutcast internet radio features work, which is to me just insane.
I also use older software quite often that has long since been updated, such as older versions of Audacity, Ableton, Adobe Premiere, etc. for various reasons such as: not wanting to spend money, avoiding spyware, ads (see: Windows 11), and other bloat which often IMO negatively outweighs the positivity of new features. There are a lot of other small utilities that I still use that are 10+ years old because they still work fine and I know how to use them blind-folded. There are also tools that haven't received updates in many years but still work great, why would I bother to look for something new that potentially will spy on me and not offer the same functionality?
For example, my parents used photoshop elements to touch up all of my sister’s baby photos.
But my parents were not very technical and kept most of the photos as photoshop project files.
Idk if project files that old will open in newer versions of photoshop, but I don’t need to worry, bc I can always find a download of that old photoshop elements and open the projects in there.
It’s not as much about daily use as it is about planned (or inevitable) obsolescence.
Everything web based WILL become unusable or change drastically some day.
Strong disagree on the second point. I don't want the choice of whether I switch tools to be based on an arbitrary factor such as when a website suddenly doesn't exist anymore. I might be very heavily invested into that tool in terms of project files, learning curves, workflow integration etc. I also might be in the middle of something very important with a deadline at the moment that I'm unable to access the site.
Other points that weren't raised - I want to be free to work in situations where I have poor or no internet e.g. when traveling.
Tying tools down to whether or not a website is available and you have reliable internet access is a huge step backwards in my opinion.
15 years from now, will this site still be up?
Will you be able to open your projects from today, then?
I think web only is a really compelling way to get someone to try a product, but I’d much rather install a tool like this. Unless you could host the site yourself, of course.