How computers should be.
I should not have to know what the word Virus means. I should not have to know what the word back-up means. I should not have to know what having a provider means, or what the internet is. Nor should I have to know something about: hard-disks, hibernate, drivers, command-line or any other technical thing you can think of. I’m an end-user and a computer should just support my personal business logic. In other word, I should just be able to use it for my needs, and it should do so, without bothering me with technical things or whatever. That’s supposed to be abstracted away from me.
I don’t have to tell the hard disk to move its head to a certain space where I thought my program lives. Neither should I have to tell to store my files somewhere online so that I can use them on my iPhone or HTC. Heck, I don’t even want to know what the word online means.
On my computer I want to create data at home on my desktop, show it to a friend on my phone in the pub or alter it on my laptop on the couch. In my house I have two desktops, three laptops and a couple of phones. That should be my personal computer. Those machines should work together as if they are one. However, all operating systems stop their work at the network interface and if an end-user wants more it’s either not possible or requires a set of technical skills to do it. The end-user however bought all those machines, so we can assume he uses all these machines. Therefore, they should work as one. Files created on machine A should just as easily be accessible on machine B. Work done on machine B should use resources from machines A, C and D just as it is a resource of its own. Therefore, the underlying operating system should be aware of all the machines belonging to the end-user in question and translates all his needs and actions to needs and actions on his personal cloud of computers.
If I am converting over one hundred pictures from RAW to JPEG and my girlfriend is just chatting on the other pc, I want to use the resources of her pc as well. I paid for those resources! If all pictures are converted and I go to the bar, I want to be able to show the same pictures to a friend with my phone, without having to understand how that is even possible. It’s my own phone so it should just show my own data.
For some reasons computers still work local. For 2009, that’s not acceptable. So if you are in the market of making Operating Systems, please make something that allows me to let my programs use my computer resources and let my computers access my own data. That means the resources of all my computers and the data on all my computers. In my opinion an operating system should do precisely that. With an online service as mediator it should very well possible. Let’s take Operating Systems into the new area.
