Touch the cloud
It’s not about typing or clicking; it’s about touching. It’s not about text, or even animation, it’s about video. It’s not about a local disk, or even a desktop, it’s about the cloud. It’s not about pulling information; it’s about push. It’s not about repurposing old software, it’s about writing everything from scratch (because you want to take advantage of the awesome potential of the new computers and the new cloud—and because you have to reach this pinnacle). Finally, the industry is fun again.
via techcrunch.com
This is what I’ve been banging on about for the past year or so.
Desktop computers are rapidly becoming irrelevant (I haven’t had one since the late 90s) and laptops will be the next to go. My current MacBook Pro is easily the best computer I’ve ever owned, but I’d love to not have to own a computer. I’m going with my gut here and saying that at least half (possibly more) of the people who have computers at home don’t need them, and would probably do a lot better with a 3G iPad and a good data plan.
What he didn’t really mention in the article is as a result of these accelerated changes, formerly cool-and-interesting technologies are becoming commodities, with the corresponding loss of profit margins. Unless you’re really good and efficient at providing your commodity service, or unless you’re clever enough to differentiate somehow, it’s time to re-evaluate the areas of business you’re in.
One of my worries when Apple moved to Intel chips was that they would have difficulty differentiating their hardware, when their guts are essentially the same as the guts of a cheap Dell laptop. I needn’t have worried, as they understood this situation before many of their competitors even knew it existed. Apple computers and phones aren’t considered commodities, even though they’re made of the same stuff that their competitors’ devices are: they’re clever enough to differentiate.
I think the hearts of the people behind Australia’s National Broadband Network are generally in the right place: Connectivity is becoming a commodity, so let’s build something to allow smaller business to differentiate based on services. It allows network service providers to “assume connectivity”, and do interesting things though that wire (or wireless network). It’s a great model, but, well, there are issues with the execution - a topic I don’t want to get into here.
I think Apple’s small-portable-things (what can we call the collective group consisting of the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad?) have the potential to be absolutely huge, and help drive this inevitable push to the cloud. Now, who’s writing the software?