Slimmer Apps
August 6th, 2008
I regularly use the big three design apps: Adobe Photoshop, Ilustrator and InDesign. All are a little slow to load, take up a bit of memory, and have many, many features that I don’t need on a regular basis. While I do consider myself a power user and I generally squeeze every bit of functionality out of the apps I use, I still feel like all these apps are just overly bloated for regular use. There has been a rise in the past 4 years or so of web apps being much more simplified and, in some ways, far more useful than their desktop counterparts. You can see this in examples like Google Docs vs. Microsoft Office, Basecamp vs. Microsoft Project. Not to mention Aviary currently in private beta, is an extremely ambitions suite off applications Aviary that are being designed to be web based rivals to many of Adobe’s graphics and media apps. The plus side of these apps is that they run on any computer with an internet connection and a modern web browser.
The Desktop
So, back to the desktop. I love a good desktop app. They are fast, feature rich, and integrated into the desktop experience better (try downloading a 2GB photoshop file vs. trying to open one locally). The problem is that over time the simple, user friendly desktop apps get feature creep, meaning that they get more an more features every version to please customers wanting to drop down a few hundred bucks on an upgrade and feel like they are getting something for it.
Honestly, I love the bloated new features of desktop apps. I really do. I don’t want a stripped down version of a desktop app that really limits my functionality. But, on my two year old MacBook Pro Adobe’s CS3 Apps can be a bear to work with. They are slow to launch, and take up too much memory at the get go.
A Modest Solution
What if all desktop apps had selectable features? What if you could choose in the preferences what features you wanted included when you launched the app? What if you could create profiles for yourself that launched the app with different features enabled, much like Adobe already does for workspaces in many of their apps.
Photoshop: What if I only need a few sets of tools for doing simple tasks like mild photo editing, resizing and saving for a website. But I needed a larger set of features for designing a UI or creating a web site comp.
Illustrator: What if I’m only doing a simple vinyl banner design and I don’t need live trace or live paint, mesh warp, etc…I just need to use some of the basic tools.
InDesign: What if I’m creating simple wedding program and I know I won’t need any extra plugins, nor the more advanced searching features, nor transparency or effects, etc.
I assume to have flexible applications like this would require a huge shift in how applications are developed and how UIs are designed (i.e. How does a customer enable or disable these features or choose the proper set of features on startup with out it being completely confusing).
With the rise of mini-portable computing, desktop apps are soon to be left in the dust. They need to adapt or die. I hope they adapt, I really do. I love the desktop too much to let that experience die.
