posted
May 23, 2010 by News Gatherer
And thanks for inadvertently helping to demonstrate that even when done properly, web apps are still crap in comparison to real apps. Thanks, Google, for reminding me that I was never very good at Pac-Man in the first place. It’s perhaps ironic that Google, the only major technology company that thinks browser-based apps are the future (even as a phenomenon like Apple’s App Store is proving the opposite) helped injure its own cause by offering up a free Pac-Man game on its home page in honor of the outdated yet iconic game’s thirtieth anniversary. You couldn’t mute the volume until after gameplay began, there was no pause button, and the achilles heel of all browser based apps accidentally hitting the wrong combination of keys on the keyboard (such as command - left arrow) meant that the game was irretrievably over, as I helplessly watched some other web page load as the game I had been playing went poof. It sometimes froze up for half a second for no reason (making my gameplay results, which were going to be bad no matter what, even worse). While it was fun, and more importantly free, Google’s browser-based Pac-Man was a piece of junk.
Not that the free gameplay wasn’t appreciated. So thanks, Google, for reminding us that A) web apps aren’t the future any more than Pac-Man is, B) Apple’s App Store is the future, and C) you get what you pay for. But, feeling like I might finally be turning the corner from terribly under-skilled PacMan player to blessedly mediocre, I went ahead and did the smart thing: I hit up the App Store and spent four bucks to get my hands on a real PacMan app. Earlier today Google pulled the plug on the Pac-Man game, but by then I had already gotten so frustrated at the limitations of being trapped in a browser that I’d already given up.
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