The Future is Disposable

For a time we were until further notice able to keep our documents with us wherever we went. We moved from floppy disks to SyQuest cartridges and Zip disks, and at the time on to CD-Rs earlier ending up with USB drives in our quest to always have access to our information. Each successive research became physically smaller and virtually more capacious. All were clunky nevertheless functional, even though they were as well a reliability and security nightmare, since it was all too easy for a disk to be damaged, lost, or stolen.

To give ourselves credit, we did recognize these issues fairly early on. Businesses tried to get users to work from shared network drives. Microsoft came up with roaming profiles and other tools to let workers bounce between computers, nevertheless you were as likely to corrupt all your email as to get Outlook to launch on another workstation.

The Future Is Here

The Future Is Here, nevertheless Unevenly Distributed -- I started writing this article on my iPad at a local coffee shop. When I ran out of coffee I closed my smart cover and walked out the door, drove home, and picked up where I left off on my computer. I never once choose a Save command, dialed into a network, or pressed a Sync button. Afterwards every few words my app used just a smidgen of my 3G bandwidth and updated the article on a cloud server. Once home, I launched the Mac version of the application and picked up right where I dropped off. In about 15 minutes I need to head off for another appointment, and during I'm in the waiting room I'll continue writing, albeit at a slower pace, on my iPhone.

It's hard to overstate the disruptive impact of the simultaneous adoption of cloud and mobile computing, combined with ever improving broad network access. All next we are gaining the ability to access near all of our information and services, almost anywhere we want. As much as we like to complain about network access, I've used my iPhone to navigate the streets of Moscow, my iPad to phone home from China, and my MacBook Air to video chat with my children from hotel rooms around the world. I can't remember the last time I couldn't access a file I needed, even if I had only my iPhone with me.

Late last year I was sitting in a hotel room in Kiev when a text message popped up on my phone, warning me of a canceled flight. The message was from TripIt, a travel service that tracks all my itineraries and alerts me of any changes. Within a few minutes, I had investigated alternate options to get home in spite of massive weather smashing a good chunk of the United States, called my airline using Skype, and secured a workable itinerary. On the long trip home I met other travelers stuck in airports, waiting for flights, who realized their journey was in trouble only when they arrived for check-in.

The earliest edges of this transition

But we are only skating the earliest edges of this transition. Not all devices offer the same capabilities, and the cloud services backing them are a mishmash of varying feature sets and reliability. During the research elite can configure and leverage near whatever they need, and regular users can access bits and pieces, it is often for all that a laborious and confusing process to make things work the way you want. Even editing a standard office document on your iPad and sharing it with a coworker can involve a labyrinthine workflow spanning multiple applications and services.

It as well isn't necessarily cheap. I'm fortunate that my work pays for all the devices and network connectivity I need. I maintain wireless access on both AT&T and Verizon, and I have the resources to pay for expensive overseas access, a variety of services and applications, and the latest devices. Fortunately, history tells us that what's difficult and expensive today will be common and cheap tomorrow, if the demand is there.

As Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others bake the cloud into our devices, operating systems, and applications, these sorts of scenarios will become the dominant way of using our research, not an exception we need to self-configure and manage.

Few months ago I decided to downsize once again

A few months ago I decided to downsize once again and bought a MacBook Air to complement my iPad. That was the moment I realized how close we are to in fact disposable computing.

Setting up the new system took a fraction of the time my migrations used to. Apple's Migration Assistant effectively mirrored my older MacBook, pulling across all my applications, files, and settings. I as well used it to synchronize my older MacBook Pro, which I for all that need on some trips that require beefier processing. In a short afternoon I ended up with three laptops with near identical configurations.

All of these laptops are encrypted, and data constantly synchronized. Previously taking a trip all I need to do is boot the one I need and let everything sync across the network. For trips where I don't want a laptop, I have my iPhone and iPad, both of which as well share access to all my files and services.

In short, all my devices are disposable. I can replace any one - from my iPhone to my Mac Pro - at any time with minimal inconvenience. Yes, restoring many gigabytes of pictures or video isn't an instant process, especially if I lose local backups, however just a few years ago losing all of my data was a very real opportunity. All the same, what makes them disposable isn't merely the persistence of information, yet the consistency of data in conjunction with applications and settings. That's what gives me the ability to pick up whichever one I want as I walk out the door and however have access to whatever I need.

This is why iCloud and the Mac App Store are so interesting. Apple is creating the early pieces we need to move past the current limitations. With the Mac App Store we need only a username and password to pull down the latest versions of our apps on whatever system we need. Instead of having to manage updates manually like I do now, I only have to launch App Store, look for updates, and install them all then and there.

Apple is making this even easier in iOS by backing up your settings to iCloud. Instead of relying on the Migration Assistant, we'll only have to enter our account credentials and wait during the device downloads all our settings from the master copy in the cloud.

Many vendors have tools to host files and backups in the cloud, nevertheless Apple is taking iCloud in a totally different direction. Within Apple's ecosystem the cloud becomes the center of everything - your apps, your data, and your settings. It won't be done by file synchronization that extends our current model of computing, yet by baking the cloud into everything we do at a fundamental level. Our devices in short become tools, not roach motels where the bits check in, however never check out.

If Apple pulls this off it will be one of the most ambitious leaps in the history of consumer innovation. Such as the Mac changed desktop computing, the iPod changed the way we listen to music, and the iPhone transformed the mobile phone into something from science fiction, the overlap of iCloud, Lion, and iOS could change everything we know about personal computing.