Jose, I did write something about this a while back, I just remembered: http://www.polaine.com/playpen/2007/06/12/leopard-death-of-the-application/
I thought Quicklook was/is interesting for some of the reasons you mentioned. It's about tasks rather than applications. In the blog post I talked about the idea of an app only opening up the parts it needs to deal with the object at hand rather than the entire thing. Of course the potential here is that the ongoing experience of using the app is sluggish rather than waiting for a bit and then using it (although with some current apps you get both - e.g. Office and Adobe apps). In that sense, it's the parts of the app that are 'in the cloud' and would be analogous to gears or some similar desktop/online hybrid set-ups. Or, indeed, thin client terminals, which is what cloud clients used to be called in the 70s.
I'm not entirely sure I believe myself in that article though. One of the reasons is that applications, on a user-expectation and workflow level, bundle up actions and tasks, usually for good reason. The danger with splitting everything up is that it all just becomes a mess in terms of any UI or UX integration. Of course, when it works, it can be great. It's hard to imagine that not all that long ago dragging and dropping things like addresses or files across different applications just was impossible. We're already working in very object oriented ways with most operating systems.
I think you're already seeing a lot of this anyway - it's possible to Tweet, IM, SMS, call or e-mail my expenses, for example, to Freshbooks via Xpenser and pretty much any web service with a decent API is open to this. But that's all about integration and interface redundancy (i.e., there are many ways to do the same thing, depending on the context).
In the end, we're always going to need an interface of some kind. Operating systems are, at a fundamental level, not just the nuts and bolts of running a computer, but a style guide for interactions. That's something that can fall apart and look and feel awful (Windows) when there is nothing to hang it on. I'm not sure that task oriented operating systems are anything new - I know we use apps a lot, but there already is an awful lot of crossover between them as well as integration into the OS. It feels to me like the cloud is another networking paradigm buzzword more than a change in interface.
Best, Andy :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Andy Polaine Research | Writing | Strategy Interaction Concept Design Education Futures Twitter: apolaine Skype: apolaine http://playpen.polaine.com http://www.designersreviewofbooks.com http://www.omnium.net.au http://www.antirom.com On 4 Nov 2008, at 04:30, Jose E. wrote:
I agree with you Andy, the iPhone is one of the best "always connected" devices right now, and the complete OS is designed to that purpose. But, I'll like to drive attention to how "integrate" the cloud services like twitter, flickr, facebook or linkeding or [insert favorite web app here]; as part of the operating system. Out there are a bunch of "desktop" applications (mostly developed in Adobe AIR) that bring some of the "cloud" to the desktop... but nothing really disrupting. I will like to see some approach integrating this services right into the operating system, with the possibilities to interact with them from the OS. Touch and Multi-touch are popular on Mobile Devices right now, but they are still niche on the desktop and laptop market. In other hand the plethora of netbooks (read Eee-PC, Acer One, etc) released lately, is having a huge success, mostly cause their price; are lacking of such "integrated" functionality with the web. The main problem I see with the OSs today, is they are "Application Oriented", maybe is time to start to think in some "Task Oriented" environments.
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