Thoughts on mobile computing
I’ve been a proponent of mobile devices and ultra-portable computers for a number of years now. I firmly believe that the future of our computing devices lies in handhelds and small form factor machines. Why? Because with the advances in fast, ubiquitous wireless data access, we no longer have to keep our data local to our machines. Thin client computing is making more and more sense nowadays as high-speed internet and massive hard drives continue to plummet in price. HP recently launched a service called Upline that provides unlimited data storage for $5/month for individual users. Four terabytes of photos? No problem! Just put them into the ‘cloud’ of internet storage for safekeeping.
Google and a few other companies have been touting their free online office applications. What you used to have to do on a locally installed office suite, you can now do online. Even multimedia applications are making the move. Adobe recently launched an online version of Photoshop called Express that has a comparable featureset. The benefits of offloading storage and processing power to the computing cloud are huge. For one, costs for client hardware decrease as you don’t need as much local storage or processing power to get your computing tasks done. Device subsequently need less battery power, so you can use smaller batteries and decrease the size of your hardware.
There are reasons why fully-featured portable devices like the iPhone are so successful; they combine excellent user interfaces with streamlined, responsive hardware. The web browsing experience on my iPod touch comes extremely close to matching that of my desktop computer. Even now, we’re seeing more and more devices that are cutting the traditional desktop PC out of the equation. You can buy books, newspapers, and magazines for the Amazon Kindle via the device’s CDMA wireless radio. It never needs to be plugged into a PC at all to function. By freeing itself from the tethers of a PC, the Kindle allows you to take it anywhere knowing that you can buy a book or download a sample reading no matter where you are.
There’s a bright future in the field of mobile devices!