A Change Users Can Believe In

Change is inevitable. Seasons change, the weather changes, our height changes and so does our weight. Everywhere I look is change. Nothing is more human than the ability to adapt to change. The human race survived an Ice Age; talk about adapting to change!

CAN USERS ADAPT TO A CHANGE IN OS?

It is certain there are two things that bring about change:

1. Inspiration
2. Desperation

When we look at the explosion of mobile market share on both the Android and iPhone/iPod Touch platforms, it is obvious why this happened. Users are inspired by the new and innovative way they can quickly and conveniently access the web. By a couple of intuitive gestures or presses, users are on the web faster than ever. Simply pull the MID out of your pocket and go.

As Mark and I joke often, if you asked them, "Excuse me, what OS are you running?", you'd be lucky if you received more than a blank stare.

HOME APPLIANCES JUST WORK

When I turn on my TV, I'm watching what I want within seconds. When I turn on the radio, I'm listening to music within seconds. When I pick up a phone, I immediately hear a dial tone and I can contact someone within seconds. That's the way home appliances function. By that measure of ease of use, it is readily apparent that a computer is not a home appliance.

Imagine for a moment a world where every home appliance was like the computer. Your TV has to reboot because it received updates in the middle of the Giants game. Your radio is infected with a virus and the antenna has to be unplugged immediately so it doesn't spread the infection to other radios. Your phone's connection is slow today so your voice will be delayed for 5 seconds.

Clearly immediacy and reliability of a home appliance are paramount to its success. When we look to the explosive growth in the MID market, it is also obvious that users are desperate for immediate and reliable platforms to connect to the web.

OPERATING SYSTEMS ARE NOT AT THE CENTER OF THE USERS COMPUTING EXPERIENCE

There was a time when the OS was a 'killer app'. These days, the web is at the center of everyone's computing experience. There are a whole generation of users who live on Facebook, YouTube and the like. Everyday, these web apps change with them and become more sophisticated. The OS has become peripheral to the users experience.

Facebook alone has over 300 Million users; how many locally installed applications can boast as many or more users other than the web browser? That's not to say that there are not local applications that we cannot live without. The problem for OS's is that handful of applications are growing smaller and smaller everyday. Paul Thurrott wrote about this very concept and I must say, I Thurrott-ly agree with him.

HUMANS WILL ALWAYS CHOOSE THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Extending the traditional OS to the Internet has been a slow and painful process, to paraphrase Jon Stokes' article which briefly comments on how the PC is failing at the Internet.

I believe that users are desperate for a change. The sheer volume of help desk tickets any IT professional receives are indicative of this. Percentage wise, how many tickets simply come from a misunderstanding of how to do something in Microsoft Windows? Sure, we IT professionals brush it off as, "Users need more training", or worse, call them all sorts of names. I often wonder how many IT jobs have been created solely because of the complexity of the OS.

If change does not improve the way a user connects to their applications, then it will fail (think Linux and how hard it is to even get applications on it that aren't already bundled).

Users just want to be connected to their applications. Therefore, the potential for a Chromebook that boots right into the web browser and near-instantly connects them to their applications touches on the very drivers of change. So the potential is there, connecting users to their applications with as little resistance as possible. That's all I'm saying. But will all their applications move with them to the web?