Comment by z0mbie42
6 years ago
Interesting, but I really would love to see honesty and the drawbacks of the approach listed.
Saas software is not only an economic incentive, but also a UX win!
The user no longer need to update his software, you can deploy breaking changes (or security fixs) in seconds (as opposed to weeks, waiting that all users download the new release).
Security: the user no longer need to download random software from the internet, and a random malware on his computer will have hard time to access his online data.
I'm sure there is a lot more of advantages of the centralized model, but I feel it's unfortunate that they are never put under the light.
Some flip sides:
> The user no longer need to update his software, you can deploy breaking changes (or security fixs) in seconds (as opposed to weeks, waiting that all users download the new release).
The user can also no longer choose when to update the software, and you can deploy breaking changes in seconds. Meanwhile, on my computer, I can choose which software to update and when I want to do it, and I'll do so as to not impact my work flow when I don't have the time to adapt to the latest and greatest.
> Security: the user no longer need to download random software from the internet, and a random malware on his computer will have hard time to access his online data.
On the other hand, malicious parties interested in many users' data now have less work ahead of them. Some shitty engineering at LinkedIn and suddenly millions of users have their data leaked.
It is true that centralizing the data means that a team of experts can manage the security as opposed to an amateur like me, but it's been proven again and again that it's unreasonable to expect data that you share with a centralized third party to be secure and private.
On the flipside, if a new update breaks something, the user can't hold of upgrading their software. You could come to work one day and learn that the obscure sorting option you use doesn't work today.
Obviously a new patch won't be far away, but there is a certain stability to controlling the upgrading process yourself.