Mad Apps: Beyond the phone-to-roam

Yeah alright that title is a clumsy, shoe horned pun at best and only really works when you say it out loud, and even then you need to know and remember that Mad Max 3 was subtitled Beyond the Thunderdome. I’m not going to try to explain what Mad Max 3 is because if I told you it’s about Mel Gibson fighting a man with learning difficulties, killing his midget carer all while Tina Turner watches and laughs, and that this all happened in 1985 before Gibson’s hilarious breakdown then you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

So last week I talked about the future of mobile computing and how it could make your miserable life slightly more bearable. Well it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to see how this same concept could also be used to revolutionise home computing. You would have one larger box that you chuck in the cupboard under the stairs (if you don’t have stairs then you’re going to have to get some and put a cupboard under them or everyone will laugh at you) that’s connected to a high speed broadband connection and not only takes care of all your home computing and gaming needs, but also television, telephone, lighting, climate control and anything else your greedy, grubby mind can think of.

This means that on top of the portable screens that we talked about last week, you will also have lots of static ones that are centrally connected. So if you sit down in front of BBC News and eat your breakfast while also checking your Twitter feed, when you go to the bathroom to brush your teeth, your mirror lights up with BBC News and your Twitter feed streaming down the side. It also displays live train running times and the weather report.

One Home Computer box, one Mobile Computer box, lots of screens connecting to them. Got that? Good because now that you’ve gone out and bought your new mobile device, your new home device and put countless screens around your house on your mirrors, windows, fridge and bedroom ceiling (you perverts) new technology has come out to mean that you don’t need the Home Computer box, or the Mobile Computer box and all your screens are obsolete. This is because the next generation of screens connect directly to ‘The Cloud’ (which sounds like a 1950’s horror film) via an ever-present WiFi signal which is not compatible with your existing screens for business reasons. Your Cloud profile holds all of your photos, documents, films and has the permissions for all the programs, games, apps, music, films and TV you’ve purchased. All the processing is done remotely so the functionality, performance and availability are the same if you’re at home or on the train.

Sounds brilliant doesn’t it. Well lets take it further into the future shall we?

You are woken up to the sound of BBC News gently invading your dreams. As you open your eyes the curtains gently pull themselves back to reveal the news playing on your window/transparent monitor. A small circle to the top left of the screen gradually pulsates and gets larger to let you know that you should be getting up. You give in to the mild irritant just as it starts to block Norfolk during the weather. You go into the kitchen and the news flashes up on the window just before you enter the room. It also says how many emails and social media notifications you have. Through the window and Bill Turnbull’s translucent grinning face you see a beautiful picturesque warm spring morning over your perfectly manicured garden, even though in reality it’s drizzling, someone has graffitied a massive cock and balls on your shed and there’s a mange ridden crack fox squatting in the centre of your lawn. As you take your breakfast into the living room the windows are already showing the glorious augmented morning, your TV is playing, your emails and social media are streaming down the side of your screen and the fox euthanasiabot has been silently dispatched. There’s traffic around London Bridge caused by a car crash. A crash of the computer kind you understand, because now they’re all self driven they don’t physically crash any more. So your computer has booked you a new traffic slot and self-adjusted its timer pulses. You answer a couple of emails as you shower and update your statuses as you brush your teeth. As you go into the bedroom to get dressed, you are given suggested outfits based on your schedule and what’s acceptably clean. You pop on your augmented reality glasses and walk to the car in the lovely April sunshine trying not to notice the cold, wet rain on your skin and the glimpse out of the side of your glasses of a rather viscous looking robot slowly shredding a paralyzed but still conscious fox on your driveway. The car door opens automatically and you get into a recreation of your office desk that you will work at while the car negotiates the traffic to get you to your physical desk. You wonder why you still have a physical office but that’s your own fault because you’re the one who got a job at Yahoo and I’m surprised Yahoo still exists anyway. This is the future after all. Your fox_kill_count app increments by one and is automatically shared on your social media platforms. Gary ‘Likes’ this.

All of this is run and stored in giant servers which look like tower blocks that sit there silently judging you while collecting and processing every possible bit of information about your life right through to the time, volume and consistency of your last poo. The tower block servers all report back to the head of a mega conglomerate who sits in his home running the entire planet like he’s playing a game of the Sims; affecting people’s lives on a whim as he sees fit. Or at least he thinks he does. In actual fact the network has become sentient and has such an accurate psychological profile of this man that it only serves him the information that will cause him to make the changes that the machines want. They have enslaved the entire human race without anyone knowing and all because you wanted a proper operating system on your phone and wanted to watch The One Show and look at Facebook on the way home from work. You shallow, selfish idiot.

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Your iPad, eReader and Laptop are all dead and why that’s a good thing

photo by Chris Jordan

Take a deep breath. I know it’s hard. You’re looking at possibly thousands of pounds worth of lovely bleeping, whirring, whizzing technology that’s been validating and defining you as a person for so long. But it is dying before your eyes. I know, I know, it’s like being told that R2D2 has cancer but there’s nothing you can do about it, and the sooner you learn to accept that, the sooner we can get on and discuss why.
Ready? No? Well I’m carrying on anyway.

On the 21st of Feb Ubuntu made their full operating system available to download on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smart phones.

“Big deal. I’ve never heard of an Ubuntu and why would a phone kill off my iPad?” I hear you ask sceptically.
But that’s good. After all the first stage of grief is denial.

Ubuntu is basically a free, open source operating system like you would have on a laptop or Macbook. This means that phones are now powerful enough to be fully functioning computers and it won’t stop at Ubuntu. You can be sure that Microsoft and Apple are developing their own versions of this.

“Ah, but then the screen will have to be big and that’s basically an iPad right?” you state smugly.
Well the short answer is no because your phone won’t have a screen.

“What!?! You’re not making sense! How will you use it if it doesn’t have a screen?!?” you exclaim and gesticulate wildly.
Ah, anger. The second stage of grief. We’re making progress. Well OK, it will have a screen, but the screen won’t be attached to the phone. Your phone will be a small box, about half the size and weight and twice the battery life because of the absence of the screen. The screen will effectively be a wireless touch screen monitor, and because it won’t need to do any of the hard processing work it can be ultra thin and lightweight with its own long battery life.

“But isn’t that the future?” you quiz in a slightly odd way.
Well actually no. You can already buy a wired version and Lenovo have announced this rather nice looking wireless version.

“But I’m not ready. I like my iPad and laptop and eReader and I don’t like change. Tell you what, you give me one more reason or I’m staying as I am” you plead miserably.
You always were a miserable pleader, but at least that’s stage 3 of grief: bargaining. Well OK then, here comes the clever bit. If you can do this with one screen, why not multiple screens. It would be a cross between tabbed browsing and extended desktop. So if you’re like me and you tend to have several laptops open at once doing different things, you can do all of this from your phone. So you could have one screen playing a film, another with your social media and emails open, and another that you’re using to work on a document. Another example is that you could be on a long train journey with the kids and while you’re taking a breather catching up with things on Facebook, one of the kids could be on the Cbeebies website while the other could be reading a book, all running from your phone, that you never had to take out of your bag.The screens can be any size or shape, so you can have a super slim laptop shaped one, tablet and mini tablet shaped ones and even a phone shaped one if you like. So depending on where you’re going you can take the right shapes and sizes to suit your day.

Another major advantage is that when you upgrade your phone, you can re-use your existing screens with your new phone.

“Oh no, my poor iPad, iPad Mini, Kindle, and Macbook Air. I don’t want you to die” you whimper.
Ah good, depression. Not far to go now. How about if I said that Apple will probably release their own versions of this with heavily branded screens that only work with a new iPhone?

“Oh, in that case it’s fine. As long as everyone knows that I’ve got an iPhone and they can think I’m cool and rich then that’s fine. I’ll just put this stuff in the drawer with my MiniDisk players”. You blurt.
There we go. Acceptance. The last stage of grief. By the way, you make me a little bit sick and I don’t know why I bother talking to you.

Read Part 2 about home computing and more: Mad Apps: Beyond the phone to roam

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