Ted, i think mark weiser was bang on. I also feel he echoed the vision/work of people like Jef Raskin, who saw computers becoming information appliances, with the singular purpose of displaying information in myriad forms.
With the iphone and more specifically Iphone OS, apple has started to fulfill this very vision. The idea is to create an invisible OS that lets information be the centerpiece of user attention and manipulation. An OS that senses context of use (based on human interaction with the device) ,fades in/out appropriately, and can be device independant.
This is very interesting.
And what is even more interesting to me is how Apple is executing this plan. Conventional wisdom suggested simplifying the complex, resource/feature heavy desktop OS’es and trying to push them onto the phones and pads. I mean every other phone and tablet manufacturer has tried doing that. BUT apple has gained an upper hand by focussing their time and energy into
a.dumping their desktop OS for their phone and pad, and
b.Inventing the interactions and information manipulation methods (pinch, zoom, stacks, swipes) for the small devices ,and finally
c.Starting on the OS with the smallest screen and then porting it onto a bigger screen.
Keeping these in mind, I am willing to bet that the future versions of OSX will be radically similar to the iphone/ipad OS we see and use today.More resolution independent and contextual.
As screens get bigger and thinner, and processors cheaper and smaller, computers will be absorbed and embedded into architecture.These are truly the beginnings of a new era in modern computing.
AND BTW.. Microsoft,hp and others still don’t get it, while google has begun to race ahead with android.
8226:
To my tech friends: (with and without a capital ‘T’). I was struck today watching the announcement of the iPad, that Apple is fulfilling the rather specific prediction of tangible/ubiquitous computing forefathers Hiroshi Ishii and Mark Weiser of MIT.
In his Sept. 1991 paper titled “The Computer for the 21st Century”, Mark Weiser identifies the following characteristics of future computing. Note the description and names of the things too (tabs=iphone, pads=ipad, boards=_______)
“The Computer for the 21st Century” by Mark Weiser
Summary: Make computers an invisible part of people’s life by seamlessly integrating them into the world.
- divert attention from a single box (like a monitor) and make the system aware of its surrounding
- create tabs, pads, and boards that scale in different sizes (from post-it sizes to blackboard sizes)
- pads are a cross between paper and laptop (think of them as “scrap computers”)
- they need to be cheap, low- power computers (this is easy for the smaller tabs, not so easy for the bigger ones)
- they also need to have software for ubiquitous applications and a network that ties all the tabs together but this is a bit difficult right now with operating systems that don’t have different hardware & software configurations for changing surroundings
- this type of ubiquitous computing will prevent information overload and make more information available at our fingertips at any time, anywhere
