Owen Densmore wrote at 06/10/2011 09:09 AM: > Files and their management are a bitch.
I think this is a natural result of the GUI. FWIW, I also _hate_ navigating file systems with any GUI I've ever had the opportunity to touch. But I _love_ navigating file systems via the command line. I suspect Jobs opinion is more an artifact of the hegemony of the 2D GUI than anything else. If I were to put on a "futurist" hat, I'd say Jobs is totally wrong and we'll see that when we finally move beyond the 2D GUI. > Jobs sez that all data should have a simple App managing the data, This is old news: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well." > and > actually, the data should not even be on individual devices .. instead > they should be in the cloud and managed by the OS/App pair. Better > yet, the Time Machine notion is generalized so that all backups, over > time, are also available to you. Oh, and if 10,000 people have the > same music, there is one, count it one, copy of the file in the sky > and we all share it! I thought we'd abandoned this sort of centralization? Yes, I realize that "the cloud" might mean that there are actually several physical copies spread around but only one locator/identifier, making it _seem_ like there's only one copy. But it's still a form of centralization, namely the centralization of lexicon (or, if you're able to handle the misnomer: ontology). He who controls the language, controls the world. ;-) > But Jobs has this right due to the explosion of devices: > phones, tvs, tablets, netbooks, desktops, laptops, servers etc. Its > just too hard to have a single web interface across them all. > > So the race is on: Will Web Apps win, or will Apps win. I'm betting > on the latter, and on iCloud to do the best job of implementing them. > > Final point: this is definitely going to up the ante to get security > right. And I'm betting Apple is hot on that, probably some sort of > key-pair approach that is made easier by King Jobs and his court. I think we'll (eventually) learn from biology and (perhaps after a collapse of some kind) maintain a healthy diversity in our devices, interfaces, ontologies, firm/software, and security protocols. The homogeneity Apple brings to the table can be very attractive, especially to the 1 sigma band. But in the end, homogeneity is fragility. Robustness comes from heterogeneity. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
