alt Hacker NewsI think that's oversimplifying it a bit. Managing files and registry entries wasn't much of a problem, but supporting an ever-growing matrix of versions across multiple platforms that were released into the wild was an issue. Modern evergreen apps kind of fix this, but you're still dealing with other people's computers and environments. Operating a service reliably is of course filled with different problems, but at least you have full control.
This so much. As a user, especially a private user, I want my apps I can install and run locally, no internet connection, nobody forces updates on me for an app that does exactly what I need and I'm used to it.
As a developer, SaaS all the way. I really really love not having to deal with versions, release branches galore, hotfixes on different releases and all that jazz. I'm so glad I could leave that behind and we have a single Cloud "version" i.e. whatever the latest commit on the main branch is. Sure we might be a few commits behind head in what's actually currently deployed to all the production envs but that's so much more manageable than thousands upon thousands of customers on different versions and with direct control over your database. We also have a non-SaaS version we still support and I'm so glad I don't have to deal with it any longer and someone else does. Very bad memories of customers telling you they didn't do something and when you get the logs/database excerpt (finally, after spending way too much times debugging and talking to them already) you can clearly see that they did fudge with the database ...