Udo's Techblog

I've been trying out StartForce, a nicely done web-based Windows clone. They have gone through extraordinary pains to duplicate the Windows/KDE experience for the web. There's even Zoho's office suite in there somewhere. However, a big question about the usefulness of this all comes to mind. While I can see the appeal of Google (and Zoho and other) online office apps (take your data with you, work wherever without having to install something, share data easily), online desktops really take the worst aspects of today's operating systems and port them to the browser.

No Development Environment
You can't develop applications for StartForce. That's a bummer. I know this is all just a proof of concept and nobody expects people to actually work with those desktops. But why then go through such immense efforts to make something like StartForce if it's merely meant as an interactive demo presentation with no real value? Come on, give us a platform to develop stuff on, and while you're at it, some kind of repository so we can see and install each other's applications?

No Community
I know, all this Web 2.0 stuff has been milked to death. But why do they give us an online tool such as this and then forget about all the completely cool stuff that comes from, say, networking all those StartForce users?

Desktop Metaphors From the 80s
Environments like this strive to replicate the PC metaphor even where it makes little sense, apparently just for the heck of it. Why is so much emphasis being placed on implementing a filesystem hierarchy while searching and tagging is lagging behind so much?

I guess the point of it all is: if you're going to spend countless programmer hours replicating Windows 3.11, you could make sure the whole thing is borderline useful while you're at it.