GM and all, a simple update on the status of the PC's future...
(Basically, nothing new. The biggies are busy promoting the particular future that favors them.)
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abcnews.com
Computers of the Future May Be just Network Browsers
A World without Windows?
By Michael J. Martinez
ABCNEWS.com
June 3 - When some of the industry's leading visionaries peer into the future of computing, they aren't looking through Windows.
In some of the crystal-ball gazing sessions of the Conference on the Internet and Society held last week at Harvard University, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy touted their server-based, Windowless vision of the future. In their world view, network computers, or "thin clients," will become the information appliances of tomorrow.
"I think people will have personal Web sites, not personal computers," McNealy says. "All this technology is available today. No new technology needs to be invented."
In those discussions last week, Microsoft was rarely mentioned. When it was, it was usually the butt of an antitrust joke. But Microsoft has ideas of its own. And what our information technology will look like will be shaped as much by consumer comfort and desire as by technological innovation.
Online All the Time
Ellison, McNealy and others are forecasting a migration from the PC-which stores nearly all of its information on a hard drive right on the desktop-to server-based network computers, which will store information and even full application programs on the server, to be downloaded on command from a network computer. "To give people the kind of access to the Internet and to information that they're looking for, I think we'll need a network computer," says Ellison, whose company has long been a proponent of network computing. "There have long been two barriers to computing: expense and complexity. But
the network computer is a simple device. It removes the complexity for the end user."
And how better to access that information than through a browser? McNealy, whose company developed the Java platform and language, says server-based network computers will use browsers to flip through all of the information on their servers. Even the definition of the computer will change.
"The concept is to get computing absolutely invisible," McNealy says. He showed off telephones, personal digital assistants, cell phones and other Java-based tools with which people could access the Internet, and conceivably, other computer programs such as e-mail and word processing.
New Mindsets Needed
So what is it that's stopping us? According to Zona Research Vice President Greg Blatnik, it's trust. "Most of the early expectations of network computing have fallen far short," Blatnik says. "That's not to say that
there still isn't potential there. It just got over-hyped."
Right now, Blatnik says, the market is still entrenched in a mode of thinking based on the desktop PC. It's tried and true, so no one is quite willing to risk their computing habits, or, in some cases, their infrastructures, to pursue the unproven benefits of network computing.
"The people will decide what to choose, not the vendors," Blatnik says.
And what about Java? Same problem: It's too young, too unproven and too many different companies are coming up with different flavors to make its promise of "write once, run anywhere" a reality.
"It's really difficult to create a believable world view based on Java," Blatnik says. "Only the most ambitious risk-takers will make that kind of statement with Java."
The Word from Microsoft
Of course, Microsoft has other ideas on the future of computing. While the Redmond, Wash., software giant agrees that practically everything will be networked, that's where it ends.
"We see that there will still be a need, and more importantly a desire, for a general purpose, highly capable, PC-like item in your life," says Dan Rosen, general manager of new technology for Microsoft. "We aren't sure if people
want to trust all of their computing to some unknown server in
the sky."
According to Rosen, there will still be a plethora of networked devices: Microsoft's Timex watch that reads Outlook from a computer screen and its prototype Car PC are just two examples. But instead of that information being
linked directly to a server, it will link to your main computer at home, and from there to the Internet, or wherever else.
"Just like everybody needs a home," Rosen says, "everyone will need a central base to store their information safely."
A Future on the Server?
One thing that almost everyone can agree on, however, is that the server will take over at least some of today's PC functions.
"I think the server will take on more responsibility as time goes on," Blatnik says.
Maybe. As Rosen points out, Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of developers who are basing new technologies on the most common platform available-Windows.
"Given that we have such a strong developer base, it defies logic that we're going to have something completely different by this time next year," Rosen says.
Then again, 10 years ago, who thought you'd be getting your news on the Internet? Crystal-ball gazing is a tenuous business.
Copyright (c)1998 ABCNEWS and Starwave Corporation.
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Personally, I like a PC that I can control at least a little bit. And the way that PC prices have been dropping, the price advantage of a network computer is getting smaller and smaller (in spite of theoretical arguments about the maintenance cost of a PC).
But my personal preferences have little to do with what corporations will decide, or what the home market develops into.
Regards,
Larry |
