> Now fast forward a decade to the early teens and the ubiquitous use of smart phones.
An interesting thing happened here as well - because of the iOS app store and its auto-update policy, "thick" clients came back in vogue again. It just happened that they're running on phones, not full PCs. I'd argue these count as thick client apps. :-) Consider WhatsApp or WeChat - it has a complete and full ecosystem of messaging, apps, and utility function. It actually (I think) supercedes AOL 2 or 3 in terms of functionality. There's DMs, Chat, Apps...
An interesting thing happened here as well - because of the iOS app store and its auto-update policy, "thick" clients came back in vogue again. It just happened that they're running on phones, not full PCs. I'd argue these count as thick client apps. :-) Consider WhatsApp or WeChat - it has a complete and full ecosystem of messaging, apps, and utility function. It actually (I think) supercedes AOL 2 or 3 in terms of functionality. There's DMs, Chat, Apps...