Just because they don’t know what the OS is doesn’t mean it’s not there and isn’t necessary. The smart phone will never become the computer, they’re too small for real work. Try typing or even reading a 30 page document on your smart phone.
There’s still going to be an OS under that Palm software.
No it’s a myth, you might not need to know how to tweak your OS, but OSes do a lot more than what users think it does. All interaction with the hardware, all output and all input, come from the OS.
I didn’t say no one uses the cloud. I said they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Clouds sound great all the way until you lose your connection and that document you absolutely have to see to do your work is gone, not to mention what happens when that cloud company ceases to exist. Local copies will always be more stable and useful than clouds. Look at the problems WordPress has had lately, imagine if your vital documents were there instead of on your computer and you needed them that day to close a million dollar sale, oops, too bad. The cloud is nothing more than trying to bring back the dumb terminal, there’s a reason computing moved away from the dumb terminal.
OS were originally designed as general purpose. I know I was there when UNIX was born. And general purpose brings baggage that is not necessary in the age of mega-chips and specialization.
The next stage is staring us in the face ... Everybody I meet has a smart phone and likely a kindle, or laptop. I don’t find lap tops generally useful for full-time work and much prefer a desktop to do real work. But then again I am not the mass market. And there is the rub, the smart phone for better or worse has taken the market by storm. Just look at what Apple iPhone and iPad sales are doing compared to their desktops and laptops.
So while writing the book may require more resources, Kindle has shown reading it is cheap and easy. Kindle books on Amazon has already outsold regular books.
Desktops are near gone at Best Buy, and laptops have become standard. But everybody is now working on the next generations of iPad knock offs. Apple sales of iPhones is looking to top 100 million soon.
This Christmas may be the one ...
Hey servers will still need OSes, just not the average mass market Joe, they have already switched to laptops sometime ago and are moving on ....
Think the nightmare you would have managing large numbers of users, and then the cloud becomes very attractive.