People have been
incorrectly predicting the death of operating systems and unique platforms for
years going to happen. All kidding aside, it’s becoming increasingly clear as
we enter 2019 that cloud-based services are rendering the value of proprietary
platforms much less relevant for our day-to-day use. Sure, the initial
interface of a device and the means for getting access to applications and data
are dependent on the unique vagaries of each tech vendor’s platform, but the
real work (or real play) of what we do on our devices is becoming increasingly
separated from the artificial world of operating system user interfaces. In
both the commercial and consumer realms, it’s now much easier to get access to
what it is we want to do, regardless of the underlying platform.
On the commercial side,
the increasing power of desktop and application virtualization tools from the
likes of Citrix and VMWare, as well as moves like Microsoft’s delivering Windows
desktops from the cloud all demonstrate how much simpler it is to run critical
business applications on virtually any device. In fact, it will be very
interesting to see how open and platform agnostic Apple makes its new video
streaming service. If they make it too focused on Apple OS-based device users
only, they risk having a very small impact (even with their large and
well-heeled installed base), particularly given the strength of the
competition.
Crossover work and consumer products like
Office 365 are also shedding any meaningful ties to specific operating systems
and instead are focused on delivering a consistent experience across different
operating systems, screen sizes, and device types. The concept of abstraction
goes well beyond the OS level. New software being developed to leverage the
wide range of different AI-specific accelerators from vendors like Qualcomm,
Intel, and Arm (AI cores in their case) is being written at a high-enough level
to allow them to work across a very heterogeneous computing environment.
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