Very good points. If only my Lightroom could notice my fading interest and could say "Hey, pal. Grab your ass off the couch and go shoot a cityscape (you've enjoyed them). I'm challenging 5 other guys like you to make the same." and then show our photos each other.
>just using an application and some form of cloud sync
Setups like this usually suck. These workflows are hard to maintain, especially by not so tech-clever photographers.
>what's the benefit of editing in the browser
You mean from a user perspective? Then "no installation", freedom choosing platform, collaborative editing, etc.
If we talk in a greater perspective... Web version of software for RAW processing can be easily integrated into any web service: Google+, Dropbox...
Sony holds a good share, so, yes, we'll take it into work. But for now our priority is speeding up. We just started optimising and already reduced processing time by 50%. But that isn't enough, obviously.
You are correct about our approach (I'm referring to dcraw here).
>Do you see this as viable for use on tablets and such?
It's a question of hardware, most of the things we build can run in browsers on tablets (in theory). We actually don't see much benefit in editing on a tablet. But iPad can be a good device for photo management and sharing.
