I almost never install an app unless absolutely required to either, but you talk as if web apps weren't some of the worst offenders in the matter of performance wasted.
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Perhaps if they weren't gluing together unaudited components, with a programming language designed to obsolete the blink tag, using the most expensive laptop on the planet they'd be less profligate with a users resources.
</warning>
Things are no better in the game industry and the days of Avie requiring engineers to develop on hardware more representative of users machines are long gone.