The worlds are colliding
Epic knowledge dropped by stevenf tonight:
In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash, but their users have lost a degree of freedom. New World computers have unprecedented ease of use, and benefit from decades of research into human-computer interaction. They are immediately understandable, fast, stable, and laser-focused on the 80% of the famous 80/20 rule.
Is the New World better than the Old World? Nothing’s ever simply black or white.
(Read the whole thing, please. Done? Cool.)
Here’s one metric I’ve been using: think of the person for whom the iPad will be the first computer they use. They will come to it with no expectation of cameras, multitasking, Flash, or storage size. Now wait a few years (months?) and give them a desktop computer. They have to interact with it using these weird things on the desk which aren’t even where the content is. Like, you look here but you click here - crazy! You have to move “windows” around. And check out all those buttons. What, nothing happens when I tap and hold on this?
Now you tell me if that person, the person the future is made of, will leave their iPad because the PC has more gigahertz.
