The future of Computing (in my eyes)
(just a quick rant about where I think computing is going)
As I'm sure most have seen with CES recently, a proverbial mess of eReaders, mobile devices, tablets, and highly portable computers have been hitting the market of recent. Soon too the iSlate (or whatever it will be called) will be released into the wild, striking another blow to the PC as we know it, any by PC I mean Personal Computer (that includes Macs.) What we know today as our PC, the box (beautified or not) is slowly going the way of the buffalo.
Granted, we'll never be able to get away from having workstations at the office; but when you start thinking of it, what do we really need at home? A dvd player, a platform that will play games, do email, surf the web, listen to music, and what? If you think about it, as an average home user, we never really utilize some of the high end features our desktop pc's or laptops have available, most of the time the box just sits there as we chat away or read what the intrawebs have to offer. Couldn't we do the same thing on our Droid/iPhone, or better yet on our Courier/iSlate/eDGe/etc? What really has set off this rant is the realization that the iPhone with a bit of hacking has a HID bluetooth profile and a video out. By itself that's not revolutionary but if you were to add a dock to the mix, one that could add more storage space, perhaps a blu-ray burner, quick output to a speaker, network connection, and maybe USB ports then what would/could you do?
I'm imagining that over the next 3 or 4 iterations of the Droid/Nexus/iPhone that there will be standard docking ports that can do full blown video, perhaps with a handed off video card (such as the one in my Dell Dock at work) that will allow us to hook up our devices to a full monitor, keyboard, mouse, and storage media, if that's the case then what's the point of keeping an actual PC anymore? I can already do 80% of the things I do on my laptop on my Droid, the only discomfort being that I can't really type on it for long periods of time and that it's screen is too small. Looking at the specs of the Nexus has caused me to realize that the computer I had only a few years ago now fits in the palm of my hand, the Nexus having a 1ghz processor and 512mb of ram, as we keep scaling down the chip size (as I recall Intel just announced a new smaller processor) it's easy to think that those smaller devices will soon catch up to what we have now.
So, I guess the big question now is what will happen in computing next? I guess the new fight will be iPhone OSX vs. Android LINUX vs. Windows (mobile?) vs. WebOS but really is it that bad? Drop me a comment if you have some input.
Windows vs. Linux
With the public availability of the Windows 7 the old fight of Windows vs. Linux has kicked back up, supporters screaming "Windows 7 will destroy desktop Linux" and the like. For example while researching links for this blog I found one that I had not seen (but not the post I was looking for, go figure) Windows 7 is enough to kill Desktop Linux which raises some interesting points, none neccessarily incorrect but all speculation. I take exception to the evangelicals that have to go to the mountain top to proclaim the death of desktop linux and here's why:
- Linux has a relatively small marketshare, from what I understand less than 1% on Home Computers. The fact of the matter is, Linux is not, and will never be, a primetime OS as all the things to learn in it are more than what most consumers feel up to. However this is also Linux's strength, those of us who have begun to really use and understand Linux do so out of our own passion for technology and learning; We like the raw power at our hands and the ability to change our own destiny, rather than bow down to a company and pay a sum of money for software that they have developed we like to develop our own. This is a major point to be considered, I can sit down and have a great idea for a program I'd like to have, write it, license it using GNU / GPL / LGPL (and the list goes on) distribute the source code and probably find someone out there to help me maintain the software, this alone would keep Linux going should there ever be a "true" fight.
- Each user has different requirements. I myself develop web applications that are deployed on Linux servers and as such setting up a testing environment (in which I can also develop) that mirrors production is invaluable, it saves me time and heaches and I'm sure there are dozens more of you that understand what I'm getting at here.
- Whatever Microsoft or Apple comes out with that's shiny and powerful will soon be ported to Linux either via official ports (such as Adobe Air and Flash) or via open source initiatives (such as Mono for example.) So saying that Microsoft has the upper hand is really a matter of relative timing.
- Security, if security is a big deal then Windows is not neccessarily the best idea. I will not say that Linux is secure or that Windows is by default insecure, but there are benefits to flying under the radar. Mac has enjoyed those benefits for years and now that they are gaining market share exploits and viruses are starting to emerge on a semi regular basis.
- Cost, Windows can cost quite a large sum whereas the main cost with Linux is support and time.
- Stability, regardless of how much better 7 is in comparison to Vista, Linux has the longterm record on stability, there are boxes still on the web that have been running years, I'd like to see that happen with Windows (consider this a wishlist item rather than direct cricism.)
- Education, when I first started using Linux in the late 90's I had an issue with the fact that I had a hard time to find people to help me locally. As my generation of early Linux users are starting to age and have kids our children will pick up what we have to offer them and utilize it.
- Community, how many Windows User Groups are there? I can't imagine too many, however most localities have a LUG (Linux User Group) where us Geeks/Nerds/etc can come together and meet other users/developers.
- Last and most important, because there is no Windows vs. Linux fight, at least not outside of the minds of those in Redmond and those that haven't bought into their propoganda. Linux is distribute in such a way that the philosophy is basically "Ehh if you want to use it there it is, I'll help you if you need" whereas Windows is crammed down our throat via Advertising and a fear of being outdated and vulnerable. Those of us who really use Linux because of the ideals it represent love, care, and support Linux, while some of us are a bit snobby about our OS at the end of the day we all realize everyone has to do and use whatever they feel comfortable with; As such we will be here for a very long time supporting, maintaining, and otherwise caring for Linux.
At the end of the day blogs, such as the one posted above, are an insult, not to Linux nor Windows or anything other than the authors intelligence, reason being because they simply don't understand the real dynamic behind Linux nor how it's distributed. To say that Linux is threatened by Windows, or even OSX, is complete poppycock for Windows to be threatening there has to be a conflict or competition, to the best of my knowledge no such competition exists nor should it ever.
The reality at the end of the day