Hans Muller's Blog

A Desktop Java "Killer Application"

It's been a while since I've contributed a blog. It's not for lack of thinking about it. The inspiration for pounding out some purple prose about developments around java desktop software has flowed from my brain to the tips of my fingers half a dozen times of the past month or so. For one reason or another I've set aside the the urge to write each time. It gets easier and easier to do so, until there's some twisted satisfaction in just coming up with a topic that might have made a good blog entry. There's no need to actually write anything, now that my brain has begun equating a brief personal visit with a promising idea with the satisfaction of actually writing about it. This is starting feel dangerously close to solipsism and so, in an effort to ward off incipient madness, I'm going to wade back into the blogosphere.

Here in the Java client department, we used to have to put up with the occasional harangue about the lack of a "killer application". The harangue would always begin in a patronizing tone, conceding that, oh yes, there are tens of thousands of desktop Java applications for all kinds of specialized tasks and specialized people. What we're not seeing out there, from our elevated perspective (they'd continue), is just one gigantically successful, widely used, everyone has just got to have it, killer application. The usual response to this kind of tirade was to tick off a list of applet games, or collaboration tools like QNext or Elluminate, or - and this was always the coup de grace - Limewire.

A year ago, at about 150 thousand downloads a week, the Limewire (GNUtella) file sharing application was a pretty respectable killer application. It's been listed on download.com for about 18 months and for most of that time it's been among the top 10 or so. Now it's number two.

Limewire's popularity, measured in terms of number downloads or the number of active GNUtella nodes, has been growing steadily. In terms of downloads, the application is now up to about 1.4 million a week. That's a lot. At the moment (per the stats on download.com), it's about 3X WinZip, 10X RealPlayer, and about 20X Windows XP Service Pack 2. Limewire's popularity can be attributed to a variety of things, including great performance, an easy to use Swing GUI, and the lack of any kind of co-bundled spyware or ham-fisted registry busting installer. I think it's fair to guess that the demise of BitTorrent listing sites like SuperNova didn't hurt either. However the BitTorrent "network" has hardly gone away and our own Supreme Court is puzzling over the merits of file sharing as I write this. I hope that they'll find that the good force balances the dark side.

If you haven't given this application a try, check it out at http://www.limewire.com or download.com. The very usable GUI features a custom Swing look and feel that supports skins and has been localized for more than a dozen languages. Startup is fast, and the app automatically "swarm" downloads from multiple GNUtella nodes when that's possible. Limewire is open source so if you're a developer you may want to visit http://www.limewire.org/. Or just join the millions of people who just use it.

Comments

• Oddly enough, another P2P client is widely used: Azureus, an SWT BitTorrent client. It is in the top 10 most active/downloaded projects at SourceForge for month (years ?).

  Posted by: gfx on March 30, 2005 at 12:25 PM

• the "Fastest P2P File Sharing Program on the Planet" is unbearably slow on my 500mhz celeron. go figure.

  Posted by: wbkw on March 30, 2005 at 02:57 PM

• virtually everything I run on my 500mhz celeron is unbearably slow. Don't bother going to figure. Any PC built using this chip was done so with a budget in mind, a budget that sacrificed performance for speed. So it's not only the CPU that is molasses, but the rest of the system is likely the same.

  Posted by: crowbar on March 30, 2005 at 05:15 PM

• You make a good point in your blog, and I think we ignore these "utility" apps at the expense of those with higher visibility, like Firefox. I use a CVS client written in Java that is excellent (SmartCVS, I never stop promoting it :). It's another example of a utility app--I depend on it, it's vital to my work, and yet I don't think of it as a Java app or as a killer app. One reason that, despite the success of Limewire and Azureus, Java on the desktop doesn't get enough press.

  Another point--the more of these that are distributed, the more JREs that are out there, which will make it easier for everyone to deploy new desktop apps as they arrive. WebStart is usable right now, but with planned improvements, and the buzz of activity around Java libraries, we're in a good position to make headway on the desktop in the next couple of years. Deploying those JREs is critical.

  Patrick

  Posted by: pdoubleya on March 31, 2005 at 04:13 AM

• Of course there is a much prettier and easier to use GUI for the open-source limewire, and that is Acquisition.

  Just goes to show how poor Swing is and why external GUIs are needed (SWT, Cocoa).

  The only good pure-Java desktop apps are dev tools like IntelliJ Idea.

  Posted by: goron on March 31, 2005 at 02:08 PM

• "Just goes to show how poor Swing is"
  Arrrrrr.... no it doesn't?

  Firstly, almost any opinion on whether something is good-looking and/or easy to use is just that: an opinion.

  Secondly, if I built a car out of wood and you built a car out of metal and my car was better than yours, that wouldn't mean wood is better for building cars. It would mean I'm better at building cars.
  Likewise, just because one person built an application using Swing and another built a similar application using another toolkit and you happen to prefer the latter does not mean that Swing is crap and should not be used.

  I think Swing is great and there's a lot of evidence of it being used effectively in many commercial and non-commercial desktop apps with great effect.
  To emphasise this point: people are using Swing to make products that other people will pay for.
  There can't be a more important feature than that.

  If you think there are particular problems with Swing and you'd like to list them and say why you think other toolkits are better in those regards, that might be a beneficial discussion.
  However, saying 'I like Acquisition better than Limewire and hence Swing is crap' serves no useful purpose.

  Posted by: grlea on March 31, 2005 at 03:09 PM

• How it is a killer application? It barely shows any of the features of a complete application. I mean it barely qualifies as an application.

  If you want a "Killer App". Try Eclipse or Netbeans or JEdit. They show the features of a complete complex application that thousands if not millions of people use.

  A "Killer App" IMHO has to be something that shows some level of complexity. A MSWord, Photoshop, Illustrator or dreamweaver.

  Limewire's interface is something I could hack out in an couple of weeks worth of work.
  

  Posted by: majeric on April 11, 2005 at 03:34 PM

• A killer app doesn't have to be a large app.
  It's an app that's used by a LOT of people, an app that has the potential to control its market (or even to generate a new market of its own).

  Posted by: jwenting on April 18, 2005 at 06:13 AM

• Current best practice is to ship a native JRE exe w/ your app. This is what Limewire and others do.
  So if you isntall several java apps, you have several JRE's. Lets fix webstart in 1.5.x.

  .V

  Posted by: netsql on April 26, 2005 at 11:13 AM

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