"No OS" computer on its way

Further to my post More on the evolution of netbooks, ZDNet’s Andrew Nusca points to a story printed today in the New York Times. The NYT has obtained confidential documents saying that cellular carrier T-Mobile will next year launch in the USA a tablet computer that uses the Android operating system. This would be an example of the device I expect to largely replace today’s personal computers: one without a conventional operating system, and pretty much just a smartphone that has a much larger screen and a full-sized keyboard (which in the case of tablets may be an on-screen keyboard).

Replace, that is, for those of us who feel the need for more than a phone in our pocket. I expect us to be in the minority, with most people satisfied with a smartphone. Today smartphones such as the BlackBerry and iPhone and Treo/Centro are priced much higher than regular cellphones, but as the category becomes more popular, and as all the cellphone manufacturers get into the market, the prices are coming down. Already, new lower-end phones and plans increasingly include browsers and some Internet access, leaving out only smartphones’ larger screen and full keyboard (physical or on-screen). I recently heard a Torontonian who is originally from India tell a story of a recent trip back to India: when he pulled out his laptop, his nieces laughed at him and said “Oh, uncle, you’re so old-fashioned – you and your laptop!” They just use their phones now, and they think that’s better!

The "Sixth Sense" wearable device

Back in the mid-1970s I decided that the type of computer I really wanted was one implanted in my body and attached to my central nervous system, so that I could interact with it via nerve impulses back and forth. I wouldn’t be able to really use it immediately as I would have to learn to emit signals along certain nerves, those that instead of being connected to various physical muscles were connected to my computer, replacing input devices like a keyboard or pointing device. In the other direction, I would learn to process the signals emitted by that computer, as I process the vision and sound emitted by my eyes and ears. In time it would happen without thinking, just as I don’t have to think about what nerves to activate in order to turn my head to the left, or how to interpret the signals from my eyes in order to form an image.

I suppose the computer-to-brain direction could be called a sixth sense. (But it wouldn’t allow me to see dead people.)

The “Sixth Sense” wearable computer recently developed at MIT introduces a new method of practical interaction that doesn’t use a conventional physical screen. It’s not an implant, but it’s a big step along the way. Watch the video of the TED 2009 presentation here. 8 minutes 42 seconds of mindblowingness.

More on the evolution of netbooks

Finally there’s an article I can really recommend on the evolution of netbooks. It’s at the Wired.com blog: Netbooks Offer a Chance to Challenge Windows' Long Reign.

I can’t, however, recommend the reader comments at the end of the article, as they’re mostly negative ones from Windows and Linux loyalists who cannot imagine that, in an online world, most people would be better served by something other than Windows or Linux or Mac OS.

There is a more reasonable comment that the article should also have listed Google’s Android OS. While no official Android netbook implementation has been announced, it was recently reported that Asus is working on an Android-powered Eee PC, possibly with assistance from Google Taiwan.

Meanwhile, here’s an update on my December post in which I wrote that I and others think Apple should introduce a netbook that’s not a small Mac but rather a large iPod Touch. (Admittedly, such a device would differ sufficiently from current netbooks as to warrant having a different name — and I have a suspicion that Apple would loudly say “it’s not a netbook”.) Earlier today Silicon Alley Insider wrote about the mounting evidence that Apple intends to introduce such a device later this year. (The reader comments there are much better!)

More on deflation and unemployment

Back in April 2006 I wrote about how Web 2.0 would contribute to deflation and unemployment. Those things are happening now (not just because of Web 2.0, of course!). Here are a couple of things that I find interesting:

Fred Wilson’s post When Talking About Business Models, Remember That Profits Equal Revenues Minus Costs examines some companies that can generate huge revenues with few employees, thanks to modern technology. Craigslist does that, while Facebook and Digg probably could – but don’t. Why not? Because they’ve been growing their businesses to make them more attractive to buyers. Now that buyers have largely dried up, the old “bigger is better” is increasingly being challenged by “small is beautiful”. Maybe Digg and Facebook will make the switch to smaller, and operate with relatively few staff, i.e. lay off lots of people. “Lean and mean” is already so much easier to do than in the past, but a sinking economy will dramatically accelerate the shift to it. I find the transition to 21st-century organizations exciting – and frightening. I don’t think that many people are psychologically prepared for how efficient companies can now become if they make that their priority. In the late 1970s, I.P. Sharp Associates, a pioneering online-services company I worked for, ran on tools such as email, instant messaging, and a flat organizational hierarchy – and was reputed to have the highest revenue per employee of any computer services company in Canada. Since then, easy credit and a zooming stock market has put the emphasis on growth rather than profitability – but that era is now over. Many traditional companies won’t move effectively because they’re not willing to accept the gravity of the situation, e.g. instead of targeted layoffs, many offer voluntary buyout packages which are most likely to be taken by those who can easily get new jobs elsewhere, i.e. the employees they should hang on to, not lose. And CEOs hired for growth are usually not the best at lean-and-mean.

The other interesting piece is that The Times (London) reports that India set to follow cheap car with £7 laptop. Even if the price ends up not being quite that low, it will be low. Part of what makes it possible is the use of domestic Indian technology: no reliance on the likes of Intel and their high cost structures. I presume there will eventually be export versions to the West, though by then I suppose the Western nations will have protectionist trade barriers in place.

We are shifting from a long period of growth to a period of retrenchment. And the Internet is there to assist in that retrenchment. I wonder whether it will eventually suffer backlash from the public at large, as things like free trade and unregulated markets do now.

What Palm's announcement did not contain

Palm’s January 8th announcement of the Palm Pre and its webOS operating system was extremely exciting for me. Palm’s products have been at my side continuously since 1997, beginning with a PalmPilot Professional and continuing through my current Treo 650. I haven’t been totally thrilled by any of the competing smartphones, not even the iPhone nor the various BlackBerrys, all of which are missing what I consider essential features that are present even in my four-year-old Treo. For instance, I want a touchscreen and a physical keyboard, and I’m astonished that not every smartphone has a switch to silence the speaker. And as for the iPhone’s lack of copy-and-paste, um, well. The new Pre looks great to me and I look forward to its availability in Canada at some point.

The Pre does however lack something that all my Palm devices have had: a desktop application (Windows or Mac OS), together with hardware and software to synchronize with the device. The Pre will not have that. Why not?

Because Palm is moving online. If I’m looking for someone’s phone number on my smartphone and I hadn’t entered it there, I’m not likely to have entered it on my laptop either, so synchronization won’t help. That phone number may however be on Facebook — and the Pre will get it from there. It might cache a copy so that it doesn’t need to fetch it again (well, not until enough time has passed that the number should be re-fetched in case it’s been changed). For a more detailed exploration of this, see this article published today by Ars Technica.

The Palm Pre seems to be a true online device, going even further than the iPhone does when it’s used with MobileMe. Bravo, Palm!

Computers continue to become more like phones

As readers of this blog know, I have long contended that personal computers as we know them today are an instance of temporary insanity. For the vast majority of people, the future is the same as the past, when people used “terminals” to access, via some kind of network, computing resources located elsewhere.

Phones have always been like this, both landline and mobile: a phone has never been of any use as a standalone device. I’ve recently written about how personal computers should behave more like phones, and now they’re being sold more like them too. Mobile carriers frequently offer subsidized phones (“sign a 2-year contract and get this expensive phone for only $X!”), and lately carriers in some countries have had similar offers with netbooks (“sign a data-plan contract and get this expensive netbook for only $X!”). This is now happening in the USA.

Windows 7

Given the widespread disappointment with Windows Vista, Microsoft is now pinning its hopes on Windows 7. But why should it get a better reception? True, Vista upon introduction had problems with device support that Windows 7 will not repeat. But that’s not the main problem, which in my opinion is this: people who have Windows XP (like me) generally don’t want a newer version. Even if they get one “for free” upon buying a new computer, they don’t want a “better” version of Windows, they want the one they have (hence the popularity of XP downgrades). They’re familiar with it, it works acceptably well by Windows standards (sad but true), and they don’t want to risk new problems, especially after hearing so many complaints about Vista. The shift to Vista caused many Windows users to decide that “well, if I have to switch operating systems, I might as well switch to a Mac”.

Why the lack of interest in improvements to Windows? To hack an old phrase, “it’s the online, stupid”. My earlier post The decline of the personal-computer operating system talked about this.

Windows 7 will be better than Vista, both by lacking Vista’s initial technical problems and by having some nice features, and power users will like it. Nevertheless I predict that Windows 7 will be a commercial flop in much the same way that Vista was. Microsoft is flogging a dead horse.