> The team has been rather clear that Ember is Desktop MVC, not web/server based

That's orthogonal to what I'm talking about. I agree that their use of the term "MVC" is much closer to the original meaning it had on the desktop (like in Cocoa) than the meaning in server-side frameworks like Rails.

But I'm not talking about what MVC means. I'm talking about what kind of applications Ember is intended to be used to build.

A flagship example would be Discourse, which is very deeply web-focused, and nothing like the way you would structure a desktop application.

Your assertion is that "Ember is not about desktop apps". Yes, it is entirely about Desktop apps in terms of structure and approach.

These apps are built on the web. One look at the Discourse Ember code and I think you'll understand perfectly the confusion I'm writing about.

But I'm curious: do you use Ember or are your responses "what you think"

Yes, Edward Faulkner has used Ember heavily and was one of the original contributors back when we started the project.

I'd definitely say that Ember is more Desktop MVC than MVC2. True to it's Sproutcore/Cocoa roots, you are supposed to be able to wire up a lot of the application with the built-in controllers that don't have to be customized (or at least customized very little). Ember is trying to take that approach, make it more familiar to web developers, and add in some additional parts that are part of what makes the internet work (ie, routers for managing state/bookmarkable urls).

> MVC2.

While we're being pedantic, it's Model 2, not MVC2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_2

Silly me. :P