The following was a comment posted by Fred Fredrickson in response to the following article on ZDNet: "PalmSource sale won't kill Palm OS".
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What OS does iPod run?
iPod is the most sucessful device since the original Palm, yet I've never seen a single comment on the OS - I wonder why.
I am sick of people comparing devices based soley on the OS. Palm OS will like morph into a version of Linux - most mobile phones are already heading that way. The most popular phone OS (symbian) is already Linux.
In the end, people don't want to install applications on their PDAs, phones, personal devices. They don't even want to be bothered with the concept of files or files systems - they just want to work with data, be it music, voice, imagery, text, whatever. They don't care about networks - LANs, bluetooth, GPRS, etc. - they just want to use the thing and for the device to just work.
Music decices don't ask where you want to store songs, they are just stored. That's where the future is, and that is where PDAs are going too.
There will be a huge variety of devices offering different combinations of functions, but the underlying concept of a compter with an OS, applications and files will vanish.
The secret is standards. If vendors build to open standards then it won't matter what to OS or applications are, they'll just work - just like iTunes/iTMS. Granted that's an utterly proprietary model, but it shows the way.
Posted by: Fred Fredrickson Posted on: 09/10/05
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I couldn't agree more with what he said. The general public doesn't care how something works or why, so long as it works the way they expect. The future won't be full of people who are more understanding of the technology they use. Sure, there will be a lot more people dependent on technology, but they will understand so little about it. If I asked you to take apart your car and put it back together, could you? Are you expected to be able to do that when you get your license? No, but you still depend on every major part in the vehical to work properly every day; and you stake your life on it. Your not worrying about whether the breaks will stop working when your traveling 75 mph on the highway.
Technologies such as the internet will become as commonplace as a telephone. Access to media and communication will become seemless; as if those methods have always existed.