The Cloud isn’t Everything
Which one?
John Gruber (Daring Fireball) has been arguing the case for PC manufacturers to build their own operating systems.
The essential argument being that with everything that we use every day already existing in the cloud it shouldn’t matter what OS we are running.
Apple has separated themselves from the crowd by developing their own OS and hardware, other PC manufacturers should be doing the same thing or just give up and die.
If Palm can create WebOS for pocket-sized computers — replete with an email client, calendaring app, web browser, and SDK — why couldn’t these companies make something equivalent for full-size computers?
If Apple and Palm can do it (and now Google) then why aren’t Dell, Sony, HP and the rest of the big gin PC manufacturers?
These PC makers are lacking in neither financial resources nor opportunity. What they’re lacking is ambition, gumption, and passion for great software and new frontiers. They’re busy dying.
Johns logic is sound as long as you are willing to make the assumption that the only reason personal computers are used today is to surf the web and be online.
The web is a great resource and has enriched or lives dramatically but is only of any value if you can actually connect to it. Admittedly, for most of the developed, world it is now easy to connect to the web even while on the move, but even when you do connect the service that you want is not always there.
Your email host may be down. Your web applications host may have server issues or simply shut up shop.
What about graphic designers or people doing audio and video editing? Photoshop on the web? Not likely! Not in a way that offers the power and options of CS4 running on my laptop.
As we’ve already seen most online applications are cut down versions, lacking the feature set and power of the their desktop “big brother”.
Can you imagine editing a high definition video and having to upload gigabytes of data to the cloud before you could begin editing your footage? Not to mention the bandwidth costs to the service providing the editing software.
What of the lowly PC gamer? Will Activision develop a version fo Call of Duty 2 for Sony OS, Google OS, HP OS, Windows, Mac and god knows how many other OS’s?
How about Photoshop, Firefox or iTunes for all these platforms as well?
I think not. It’s just not a practical solution. Most companies have a hard time getting versions of their software out for Windows, Mac and Linux at the moment.
The reason we have so much diversity in software at the moment and so much polished quality software that we rely on, is because the operating system arena is not saturated in the way that John wants is encouraging.
If it was, then talented developers would all be working on incredibly similar projects for a vast number operating systems, their talent and the programs they develop reaching incredibly limited audiences.
As it stands now we have vast armies of developers working for a limited number of platforms which allows them to develop and innovate without having to constantly reinvent the wheel. They can build upon and learn from the work and code of others.
Lets not even bring the issue of software patents into the mix!
Imagine if every time you wrote an application you had to do it for 16 different operating systems with their own file systems, quirks and API’s? A nightmare!
In fact it is that nightmare that would bring us very rapidly back to a situation where we had only a small number of OS’s as developers would develop for the platform which is the most developer friendly.
This is turn would lead to end users choosing that platform as it would have the greatest choice of software and support. That in turn brings more developers to the platform because the money is where the users are.
As John notes this already happened in the early days of personal computing when we had a massive amount of operating system choices and they all whittled away as developers and users moved to the platforms with the most choice and users.
See where I’m going with this? Even if every PC manufacturer released an OS tomorrow, after a while we would end up with the vast majority of people using only 2 or three of those operating systems.
Everything is not in the cloud, nor should it be. The cloud is unreliable. Connections to the cloud are unreliable and the cloud can’t match the convenience or power of software running locally on your home PC or laptop.
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