What Comes After the Windows Era? | Hacker News Reader

What Comes After the Windows Era?

linuxjournal.com

12 pointsedw51917 comments

It's already arrived. The "I don't care what OS you have, as long as you have a reasonable browser" era. The browser is the new windows.

Hah. Can you...

- Play your music online?

- Play your video game online?

- Type papers online? And no, google apps don't quite cut it :P

- Watch a dvd online?

- Do your taxes (in a Turbotax) fashion online?

Well, none of the above, really. So, whoops! Guess the browser isn't the next operating system!

> Play your music online?

Yeah, provided you have the bandwidth. If you don't, any OS has music management software.

> Play your video game online?

You got me there - not yet. Half life doesn't work in Flash.

> Type papers online? And no, google apps don't quite cut it :P

You can, but if you don't want to, any OS has productivity software.

> Watch a dvd online?

Yes.

> Do your taxes (in a Turbotax) fashion online?

Yes.

And just where could you store this music? ;)

And you can't type papers online. Google apps are so crippled.

You can't watch a dvd online last time I checked...

...And I know of no way to do (Turbotax style) taxes online.

Store music? huh? * go to one of a billion music playing websites * Search for the track you want * Click play

It depends what you mean by DVD. If you're talking about a physical DVD, then obviously no you can't. If you mean play the movie/tv show, then yes obviously you can.

There are about a billion music playing websites that have sprung up in the last few months.

Video games, I've not been a PC gamer for a long time, so a wii makes sense for that, although there are a few good games being written for the browser.

Google apps works well enough...

Sure you can watch DVDs online... I watch TV shows etc in my browser.

Seriously, for most people there is no need for desktop apps anymore.

Cheering

I would like something like a splashtop and lets me run emacs+whatever language I'm using to run via the browser.

Distributed emacs, business idea?

I like how the favicon distracts me every 5 seconds. Classy.

While I obviously agree that in the age of the internet, what OS you run becomes less important, this article is simply too biased to be readable.

I'm sure the Linux fanboys will love it though. I could almost hear the author cheering "Linux! Linux!" in the background while I was trying to get trough it.

a great article. the OS is a thing of the past. Our 4 year old Windows PC takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up and allow Firefox to browse. It's too long. I'm NOT willing to re-load everything, that would take an entire DAY. My Mac takes half the time to boot. Interesting that they say Apple is the one to beat, I agree. Having an "instant-on" computer would be a great thing, even waking up my MacBook when I get home takes maybe 15-20 seconds to browse. But Windows is a dinosaur these days. It's just been drug into the ground and bled dry of it's useful life.

Interesting that they say Apple is the one to beat

Well, no, it's obvious really. OSX is ultimate proof that you can take Unix (BSD in this case) and put an interface on it that ESR's Aunt Tillie can use. The Linux community has invested squillions of hours in improving the desktop and given it away for free, and people would still rather spend $$$ on OSX. Why do you suppose that is?

good question. maybe most people don't know what Linux is because they don't have a shiny music player. ;-)

They have collectively invested squillions of hours, but I question whether they have done so "improving" the desktop.

My stock answer to this, and I am picking on them somewhat unfairly but it feels representative enough to make a point, is Linspire. "Come on baby, run Linspire" they sang at me. "We have photo organisers and music players" they advertised.

And showed a picture of LSongs Media Player.

http://media.linspire.com/mailers/mm/lsongs-shot.jpg

Need I say more? Is anything else needed to tell you why people are willing to spend $$$ on OSX?

There is still at attitude among many self-professed geeks that people who can't write their own software should take whatever they're given and like it. After all, it's free, right? Such ingratitude!

I think if there's hope for the Linux desktop it will come from Google, because they have a data-driven culture (and a pile of money). If they set up a usability lab and the statistics show that 79% of users completed their tasks 62% faster when the interface was like this then that's what they'll do, no-one will argue, they'll just get on with it.

Please dont. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com