Desktop applications as a means of using computers for the general public are long dead, and the test is simple, try to name a few desktop applications that are new in the last 5 or even 10 years, compare it to the number of applications mobile and / or web applications.
Also look at how many end users renew their desktop / laptop often, this has been a downward trend for the past decade, major desktop companies shifted their focus to the professional audience as the general public gets 90% of your computing through your phones or the browsers on your 5-year-old laptops, because unless you're a hardcore gamer, you won't update your hardware every two years like you used to.
In the professional world, desktop applications also had a big impact, most of the main applications that are used on a day-to-day basis are basically SaaS applications, things like Salesforce, the Google suite, even Microsoft Office is now tightly coupled to online services and can be fully used. In the browser, even schools issue Google Chromebooks to students.
That leaves creative and processing power-intensive professions, such as software development, computer graphics, video editing, or even professional gamers, etc., still relying on desktop software, although most of these suites They are not new, they have been developed over decades like Photoshop, Final Cut, Illustrator, Visual Studio, and also free software.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, people using home software (all of which was "desktop" since there was no non-desktop) were hobbyists interested in personal computers in themselves. Later, in the 1980s, when machines became more powerful and software more useful, another group appeared: professionals. Engineers and architects who design things with CAD software. Artists and design professionals who create works of art printed with desktop publishing software. Scientists calculate with math packages. And, of course, professional software engineers who write code for compilers and interpreters. Throughout all of this, there were non-professionals using desktop software, but they were people interested in the technology itself and willing to spend money on it as a hobby, not like the general public.
When the commercial web left academia, there was a compelling reason for the first time that non-professionals and non-digital computer enthusiasts were spending the money to buy one of these expensive gadgets. Before Amazon, Ebay and Facebook etc, if you weren't interested in programming and you weren't interested in creating digital art, mixing digital sound, or other computer-facilitated activities, there really wasn't much to do with one. of these over $ 2000 machines.Â
During the first DotCom boom, there were suddenly many reasons to want to own that machine. However, the dynamics required by a desktop computer to facilitate these activities turned out to be transitory. Mobile devices are all that people need. Mobile devices are all you need to buy concert tickets, post photos of your children online, request a carpool ride, and more.
What has happened now is that the pool of people who own desktop computers, and therefore use desktop software, are reverting to their original demographics of professionals and various types of computer enthusiasts. If anything, that group of people has probably gotten bigger over the years - it's just not as large as the group of people who find mobile devices useful.
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