If I didn't want to do cloud sync, I'd be more excited about a local sync. One doesn't tend to generate gigabytes of data on a phone so even a Bluetooth sync would be sufficient for most people.
You don't use your smartphone to capture HD video, do you?
I do from time to time. Even they can be transferred over today's WiFi in a matter of seconds. My point is that keeping local devices in sync for all but a very few uses is already today easily solvable. So I wonder why we'd want to move to an architecture where our computers are reliant on our phones... there seem to be some significant tradeoffs to that model and it's not clear to me what real gains there would be.
I don't see why this would be the future. I'm going to want to carry a "phone" for sure. Most people who've ever had a smartphone expect to have one the rest of their life. I'm also going to want (at least) a machine with a keyboard and bigger display than my phone. Why in the future would I want to tie one to the other? I wouldn't want that today — my computer works just fine without having to do some weird sync/plu…
I'm not sure you or I are the people most in need of a solution like this. Consider, there are over 5 billion active cell phone subscriptions in the world. That's more cell phones than toothbrushes or toilets. And smart phones are being adopted in the developing world at a surprising rate. For many people, a smartphone will be their first and only computer. If Canonical can enable desktop style content creation for p…
Why would someone in the developing world want their computer to be reliant on their phone? Presumably for cost, but that isn't an argument for docking-phones, is it? You'd still need the system case/power supply, display, keyboard, and pointing device (and would presumably also have speakers and camera, though I suppose you could reuse those of the phone, if you were really trying to cut costs). The only thing missing is the "computer", and an ARM system-on-a-chip that packages multicore CPU, memory, and a little storage can't cost more than $10 today, can it? Besides, since you'd have to have smarts to drive the networking/remote desktop features of the non-computer computer, you'd probably use a very similar chip anyway.
> What benefits do we stand to gain from still having things run or be stored on a local machine? Security.
Do you store all your money at home or do you have some in bank? There's no reason why some big entity couldn't guarantee that the data you put in will get back to you whatever happens to company holding your data. If you mean security as in privacy, then there are cryptographically safe methods on preventing that.
If somebody steals your money from a bank, the bank can replace it.
If somebody steals your data from the cloud, there's no way to make things ok.
> What benefits do we stand to gain from still having things run or be stored on a local machine? Security.
Do you store all your money at home or do you have some in bank? There's no reason why some big entity couldn't guarantee that the data you put in will get back to you whatever happens to company holding your data. If you mean security as in privacy, then there are cryptographically safe methods on preventing that.
Even with strong crypto, if you're typing in your passphrase on a "dumb" machine that someone else owns and controls, you're risking the entirety of your security on how trustworthy (and security-competent) the owner of that machine is. No thanks.
> This, or something like it, is the future: the computing device is portable, and adapts itself to the forms of input available Maybe it is, but it's not the future I'd like best. I would like to have a desktop in the cloud, and data in the cloud, and nothing in my pocket; nothing to lose or break or have to make sure it still has juice. When I get somewhere to work (a client's, a café, a friend's, etc.), I log in t…
If you think your data "in the cloud" (which is just a way of saying "on other people's physical systems") is safe from theft, breakage or some foreign government agency pulling the plug, you haven't been paying much attention to reality lately. And by "lately" I mean the past decade. Don't get me wrong, I like the convenience of "the cloud". It's especially helpful in synchronizing all the data that I have on cheap…
Backup device manufaturers are really missing out on big bucks by not making a small NAS that downloads all you cloud data. Give it access to Google/Dropbox/Flickr etc an have it silently back everything up.
I hope they've thought of this and I've just missed it. They won't be able to sell USB based backup drives for much longer.
> This, or something like it, is the future: the computing device is portable, and adapts itself to the forms of input available Maybe it is, but it's not the future I'd like best. I would like to have a desktop in the cloud, and data in the cloud, and nothing in my pocket; nothing to lose or break or have to make sure it still has juice. When I get somewhere to work (a client's, a café, a friend's, etc.), I log in t…
If you think your data "in the cloud" (which is just a way of saying "on other people's physical systems") is safe from theft, breakage or some foreign government agency pulling the plug, you haven't been paying much attention to reality lately. And by "lately" I mean the past decade. Don't get me wrong, I like the convenience of "the cloud". It's especially helpful in synchronizing all the data that I have on cheap…
> What benefits do we stand to gain from still having things run or be stored on a local machine? Security.
Do you store all your money at home or do you have some in bank? There's no reason why some big entity couldn't guarantee that the data you put in will get back to you whatever happens to company holding your data. If you mean security as in privacy, then there are cryptographically safe methods on preventing that.
I think the crucial difference here is the number of entities I have to trust. People can generally do a bit of research on a bank before they join one, if a bank really sucks you can switch, and if a bank seriously defrauds you then you know whodunit and can pursue legal recourse. By contrast if I'm using a supposedly dumb terminal provided by some random cafe then there's absolutely no way to prevent them from seeing everything I do [1], or from inserting arbitrary commands into any service I use. And if I use the provided computers at many locations, as you suggest, there's probably no way for me to figure out who it was that screwed me.
This, or something like it, is the future: the computing device is portable, and adapts itself to the forms of input available. There's no reason why your display should have to be permanently attached to the device that drives it, and increasingly, it won't be. I don't know what the implications are for Ubuntu or Android. But genuine support for a first-class computing experience is one of the few things that would…
Desktop PCs will always outperform portable devices. I think future docking stations will include both a big display and a big processor. When you dock your phone, your phone's apps will be running on the dock's fast processor while accessing your personal data off the phone. When you undock your phone, your running apps will seamlessly migrate to the phone's processor(s). This will be extremely asymmetric multiproce…
In the era of dark silicon, it might make sense to have those extra processors in the phone itself but only turn them on when you have an external source of power and a good physical connection for dissipating excess heat.
I think this is a great step in the right direction, and we've already observed a compression of devices recently. Consider the Laptop, Desktop & phone. Who still uses a desktop? Its really just a matter of time until we compress the laptop and phone, we're a long way off in my opinion (in terms of actually usable hardware) but once we have the power and portable input devices (i think one could already structure an argument to say we have them) i don't know what would hold it back.