My company [0] makes a CAD-like destkop product for architects & real estate developers. It's sold on a subscription, but the product is a native application (runs on C/SDL/OpenGL). Nothing inherently prevents you from mixing that business model and delivery mechanism. Many of our customers (especially architects) are used to installing & running desktop software.
Pros:
- You give customers the magical feeling when the app reacts instantly because the front-end doesn't have to wait on a round-trip to the server to execute complex business logic. It actually blows customers' minds to realize how powerful their computers are when you use the hardware well and don't have to wait on the network.
- You have a very low infrastructure bill.
- The platforms/frameworks/libraries are pretty stable compared to the webdev world. You do less migration work and get to become an expert in something that will be around for a longer time.
- It's easy to develop and test locally in a 'production-like' setting. I make sure my hardware reflects my customers' hardware.
- You can trace every line of code after main(). It eliminates a lot of complexity and a whole category of service communication bugs (and introduces other categories of bugs :)).
- Developers are usually more predisposed to thinking about performance (in my experience).
Cons:
- You have to buy & renew code signing certificates, which is a hassle when you're independent or a small company.
- You have to build/buy/maintain some form of installation/update system and be prepared to deal with users who refuse to update.
- You have to deal with corporate IT departments & their security requirements (we're B2C).
- You typically want to customize at least some parts of the UI/UX for Mac/Linux/Windows.
- You run into bugs from clients that are hard to debug because "it works on my machine", and you don't have access to theirs.
It's definitely a trade-off. I can understand why most devs/companies don't choose to be on the desktop.
Pros: - You give customers the magical feeling when the app reacts instantly because the front-end doesn't have to wait on a round-trip to the server to execute complex business logic. It actually blows customers' minds to realize how powerful their computers are when you use the hardware well and don't have to wait on the network. - You have a very low infrastructure bill. - The platforms/frameworks/libraries are pretty stable compared to the webdev world. You do less migration work and get to become an expert in something that will be around for a longer time. - It's easy to develop and test locally in a 'production-like' setting. I make sure my hardware reflects my customers' hardware. - You can trace every line of code after main(). It eliminates a lot of complexity and a whole category of service communication bugs (and introduces other categories of bugs :)). - Developers are usually more predisposed to thinking about performance (in my experience).
Cons: - You have to buy & renew code signing certificates, which is a hassle when you're independent or a small company. - You have to build/buy/maintain some form of installation/update system and be prepared to deal with users who refuse to update. - You have to deal with corporate IT departments & their security requirements (we're B2C). - You typically want to customize at least some parts of the UI/UX for Mac/Linux/Windows. - You run into bugs from clients that are hard to debug because "it works on my machine", and you don't have access to theirs.
It's definitely a trade-off. I can understand why most devs/companies don't choose to be on the desktop.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhCm5sh9mr8