So long as many of us have to depend on Satellite internet for our so called high-speed internet; or even wireless, where we have pathetic 7.5gb to 18gb bandwidth caps; web apps will remain a pointless, bandwidth suckling notion. Obviously many of the members here "get it" on a multitude of levels, so my opinions here aren???t necessarily reinventing the wheel. Web based apps (at this point) are simply to anemic by comparison to the real thing.
Obviously document based web apps are pretty good since they really don???t require ???too much??? in the way of heft and or power to accomplish their task. But, any sort of video, photo, 3D rendering, music editing/composition, recording, game dev., or graphics development program with substantial horsepower is going to reside ON a desktop/workstation. That's not to say that these types of apps couldn't ever be developed to a more substantial and usable degree, but it all (in my opinion) boils down to the reliability, integrity, availability and affordability of the internet and bandwidth.
I think ???apps??? in general will remain more of a niche; however, an ???in demand niche??? for a very long time. Let???s get the whole internet/bandwidth thing worked out first before we start predicting the ultimate ???Phase out??? of desktop/workstation software! Lol