I guess it depends on your frame of view. Web apps have advantages over traditional desktop software, such as no installation required and upgrades by hitting refresh. Don't underestimate the power of users being able to just try your app by surfing to a URL, and "installing" it by remembering the URL (which the browser does for you), or bookmarking it. Some browers now automatically populate a home page with your most commonly used apps/sites. If you think about it Google is like a big web app store.
Version Tracker and all are great, as are traditional package managers, but they still can't match the UX of web apps in that area.
They are just different, each with their strengths and weaknesses. It seems like it's going to be easier and quicker to get web apps on feature parity with desktop apps before the desktop catches up in the ways it is behind.
Web Apps do have advantages over traditional desktop software -- what I'm trying to get at is that we can take what we've learned about web apps, and apply that knowledge to 'traditional' software to get desktop apps that don't suck. It doesn't have to be about web apps vs desktop apps, or one catching up with the other. Within a few years I don't think there will even be a concept of desktop vs web apps, not because one killed the other, but because they will have been integrated.
> Some browers now automatically populate a home page with your most commonly used apps/sites.
This is exactly what I mean. Now? This could have been done years ago. Don't even get me started on the bookmarks system (offline and online both). There are innovative things that can be done with these simple aspects of web interaction that could have been done years back -- it's not like there's some miracle tech that is making new stuff possible. UI designers as a group (or maybe more fairly, the companies that employ them) have, in my opinion, been inexcusably lazy in regards to pushing forward the computer user experience.
Version Tracker and all are great, as are traditional package managers, but they still can't match the UX of web apps in that area.
They are just different, each with their strengths and weaknesses. It seems like it's going to be easier and quicker to get web apps on feature parity with desktop apps before the desktop catches up in the ways it is behind.