Thursday, March 22, 2012

Why the iPad is temporary but the screen is forever


Just thinking about the old MSFT case with the DoJ where a split up of Windows and Office divisions was muted (but abandoned), with current rumours that Office will be on the iPad later this year there is a question on the post-PC revolution...

Will I be able to code?  If I've got Office then that covers 90% of everything I do in my current role.  10% requires some sort of virtualisation solution, but VDI could be acceptable.  This means for Powerpoint and Word jockeys like me there really is no reason for the company to give me a full laptop.

But I still like to code to relax and the latest iPad has a larger screen resolution, more memory, more storage, better network connections and a better connection to an external monitor than the laptops I used ten years ago to code with.  This got me thinking, what actually stops Apple releasing XCode for iPad?  What stops an eclipse port?  Well there is already some work around using the browser as the editor but I think more will be done.

So what do I need to code?

  • A processor, RAM and storage space
  • A big screen, ideally more than one
  • A decent keyboard
So while the iPad could deliver on the processor and RAM and a single decent screen and bluetooth to a keyboard its actually a bit of overkill.  Why couldn't my iPhone be the processor, RAM and Storage?  Why won't that just be on Amazon or another cloud provider?

The Post-PC revolution is currently dominated by PC mentality devices, integrated boxes of screens and stuff.  Technologies such as 'AirPlay' however talk to what the future really is.  A device that connects remotely to screens, and other elements.  So the future will be about the ultra-lightweight 'iScreen' which connected automagically to your iPhone 12 so you don't need to worry about heat issues or weight as the screen will just be the screen and some pass through circuitry.  The drive will be for that connected device that you have to link to your local personal network of things.

Why do I know this?  Because Bill Joy gave a presentation at JavaOne in 2001 that predicted it all.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://desktop.onlive.com/ and VMWare server with HTML5 should be doing this very soon

Anonymous said...

...and they're cloud based so you don't have to worry about maintenance.