Slate
One of the nice things about Word and Photoshop is that once I fire them up and start working, I can forget all about the Internet for a few hours. Sometimes, my PC and I just want to be alone.
I couldn't agree more. The idea of putting all sorts of applications online is interesting, but not really practical. Photoshop Express is interesting, but it's no more than a proof of concept to me. Perhaps worth having as a tool on an online picture ordering site (like MPIX) as a means of last minute adjustments.
Similarly, gDocs, is convenient if I need to share text with someone as I type it (and see theirs), but it's really not a replacement to Apple Pages, which I do use instead of Microsoft Word.
This guy's basic point is good. Computing through the browser is an interesting idea, but yet to be practical.
The real money will be made when someone figures out how to use these simple apps as they are – not as desktop replacements, but as quick little apps that plugin into simple web apps. The web is about collaboration, make the web apps about that too.