Why Vesper Didn’t Start as a Web App

Some people — people I respect — have asked why we didn’t make Vesper a web app from the start.

Or: why not make it a web app now? Surely it would be cheaper to run, and you wouldn’t have to worry about syncing or about keeping up with changes to iOS.

Well, we did want to do a web app. We worked with Alex King, who got pretty far along on the design. In those days there was no Apple-provided syncing system with web services (there is now), so we wrote our own sync system in part because we wanted to make a web app.

And: all three of us love the web. We have blogs and podcasts and videos on the web. My longest-running “product” is this very site — it’s 17 years old, and of everything I’ve ever done it’s the thing I’m most proud of.

But we didn’t get together to make web apps. We love making iOS and Mac apps, and we don’t love making web apps. We’d do it, but it’s not our passion. (Well, we would have had Alex King’s team do it, actually.)

There’s a difference between loving the web and loving making web apps.

Way back in 2002 I wrote Why I Develop for Mac OS X — it’s because of what Joel Spolsky called an “emotional appeal.” I wrote:

But to me it’s the difference between an empty night sky and a night sky with all the stars shining and a big, bright bella luna. “Emotional appeal?” Oh yes indeed. And I don’t apologize for that for one second.

It’s still true, 14 years later. And it’s why Vesper didn’t start as a web app, and why we’re not converting it now.