> I would say get ready for the Post Hardware Era.
That's what they said in the mid-90s as the web was catching on (remember the "network computer"?). And then came Flash and Java applets and Javascript and various other things and it turned out that a dumb web client had to be pretty smart to keep up with the web.
I try never to say that something is impossible, because I don't really know what the future will bring, and convincing myself that I do would be foolish. But I will have to be shown a lot more than what we've seen so far with OnLive before I'm convinced that the future of mobile devices is as dumb terminals.
We've come a long way since then and still have a ways to go before the dumb terminal model comes back... but I think it will happen. I think the problem for that model has been that the only people who have found a use for the power of a full size computer on a mobile device have been gamers, but I think this is probably because developers have never had the ability to build applications that use more than the mobile device's native hardware. OnLive needs to make a development platform on their service.
That's what they said in the mid-90s as the web was catching on (remember the "network computer"?). And then came Flash and Java applets and Javascript and various other things and it turned out that a dumb web client had to be pretty smart to keep up with the web.
I try never to say that something is impossible, because I don't really know what the future will bring, and convincing myself that I do would be foolish. But I will have to be shown a lot more than what we've seen so far with OnLive before I'm convinced that the future of mobile devices is as dumb terminals.