From: Bryan Moss (bryan.moss@dial.pipex.com)
Date: Thu Mar 09 2000 - 13:07:13 MST
> Hey guys, look at this...
>
> [Corel Linux on cheap Intel boxes...]
Do we really want the whole world using UNIX? I'll answer
that question for you - no! But here's the trillion dollar
question, what OS will we be running in the near future if
not Windows? Mac OS? BeOS? OS/2 Warp? Anyone know of any
promising non-UNIX open source projects?
It looks to me like Windows is almost ready to die and we
don't have anything to take its place in the hearts and
minds of Joe Average (as far as Joe's concerned has there
been any innovation beyond the original Mac? Does Mac OS X
have enough eye candy to fool Joe in to thinking computing
has advanced, or will Joe have to continue to rely on id
Software for that?). Every company that could be developing
such an OS (I use OS here in the loose Microsoft sense, I'm
a fan of bloat) is either on the Linux bandwagon or on the
'Internet Appliances' bandwagon; neither are going anywhere
(I hope). I don't think the right OS will emerge from the
Internet, not in a timely fashion, but I do believe its
source should be open.
I recently read an article in which a journalist claimed
that because of the Web, it doesn't matter what OS you're
using as long as it can run a browser. I've seen other
journalists claim similar things. When people genuinely
believe bastardised hypertext is the pinnacle of human
achievement it's time to innovate, and fast!
Sometimes I wonder if the current dot-com madness, which
places the emphasis not on technology but on some vague idea
of a future business model, is simply due to a lull in
software development due to our underestimating the
complexity of voice interfaces and other exotica. Is there
room for something new or should we wait until there's
enough hardware to do more exotic forms of human-computer
interaction, or perhaps even remove the human altogether?
BM
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