On the Elephant in the Room(Apple's New Toys and the Future of Computing)

Apple announced new products today. Naturally, everyone's talking about it, writing about it, or thinking about it. Or maybe not. My wife, for example, could care less about the new Apple products until it's time to buy one. I, however, love the announcements. I read the live blogs and watch the tech news shows. I watch refresh Apple's website until the Keynote is posted and watch it as soon as I can. In short, I'm an Apple nerd.

Needless to say, I'm stoked about the new MacBook Pro. I think the screen is dazzling(2880 by 1800 pixels), I love how light it is(4.46 lbs.), I love how thin it is(.71 in.), I love two Thunderbolt ports, a Firewire port and two USB 3.0 ports. Like I said earlier: Apple Nerd.

If you made it through that admitedly gushy introduction(color me impressed), then I'd like to talk about where computers are headed, Macs in particular. I consider myself kind of a half-power user. I like to do things like partition my hard drive and install Windows and fool around with DOS emulators and Aperture. I'm also a bit of a gamer. My primary computer is a Mac Mini. I don't miss the optical drive(I can use the drive sharing function to use my wife's drive on her Sony Vaio) and it has enough power to run Diablo III and Starcraft II.

What does this have to do with today's Keynote? I think we're headed for a computing future in which we keep stripping away peripherals from the deviced. This isn't really breaking new ground. I think most people can picture a future (and some would argue that we're already there) where our main computing device is a computer attached to a slab of glass. I think we're pretty clearly there for most people's needs: web browsing, email, light word processing. We'll eventually get there for the pro users.

Imagine Apple's new MacBook Pro body with a touch-display where the keyboard is rather than a clamshell design: a small iMac or a big iPad, if you will. With Thunderbolt and Firewire ports this device becomes an incredibly versatile computer. Writers can connect keyboards via Bluetooth, audio professionals can connect mixers and instruments and video professionals can connect hard drives and cameras.

In short, I think we're headed for a future in which our devices start as simple as possible out of the box: a slab of glass with a computer tucked behind it. In this future, we bring our own wrinkles and complexities to our computing experience and through high speed I/O ports are able to modify and customize that experience to meet our professional and personal needs. I'm excited about this and would love to see a iPad Pro some day.

 

Andrew

Reading:

Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay. Page 259/676