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Comment by alexb_ | Hacker News Reader

The way I see the future of computing: You have what basically amounts to a keyboard, a screen, and a wifi chip, so that it can be sold at astonishingly low prices. No excess memory, no excess processing power, because all memory and storage will be rented out or extracted for data collection. Privacy will become a thing of the past since everything you do passes through a corporation that's doing the real computing. You will own absolutely none of your data or your programs, you are beholden to the whims of a corporation that can raise prices whenever they feel like, and it will become the norm because "wow cool $90 computer that can run any program".

People will absolutely buy inferior products if it's cheap enough and marketed well enough.

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This is what computing looked like 60 years ago. Minus the excessive data collection.

Based on historical trends it seems more likely to me that $90 computers of the future will simply be able to run the most advanced consumer software locally and thin clients will just be unnecessary complexity.

The hardware will probably have the capabilities to do so, but I can see consumer software reaching a point where much of the compute is performed remotely, and we're just being streamed a rendered interface.

If the hardware has the capability of doing all my calculations locally, then why would I want to do it all remotely and just receive a rendered interface? So that I can have the "added convenience" of having my software unavailable during the occasional network outage? And the pleasure of network latency, even when there isn't an outage?

Who says you'll have a choice?

This is why plain text matters.

"Choice" can mean two things.

1. The vendor has a choice of what they offer me. They can decide to offer only networked, for-rent versions. That's their choice.

2. I have a choice what I purchase or rent. I can decide to only buy (not rent) software that resides on my own machines. That's my choice.

They can pursue a direction that I don't want if they choose to. I can still choose not to go along.

What's being suggested here is that most vendors would only offer networked solutions and you wouldn't have enough options to exercise your choice.

We've gradually been having control of the software we use wrestled away from us.

The (unfortunate) idea is that network latency will be low enough, and rendered interfaces will be good enough, that companies can make "streaming software" a compelling enough experience for the masses, to the point where it becomes normalised.

That would require networks to be massively more reliable than they are currently. It's all well and good if you live somewhere where you have a rock-solid connection, but most of the world doesn't. And is unlikely to anytime soon.

Alas, we are already in this situation. Remember that mostly every SaaS app is already a web app.

Some very popular CAD software already works this way (Autodesk Fusion 360 and OnShape, possibly others). The people with money to spend on such things tend to have good network connectivity.

Another of the "you will own nothing, and be happy" predictions? Let's hope they don't come true (or at the least, fight against it as much as you can)...

Sounds a bit like a Chromebook to me.

Apple seem to be fighting that trend with their in-house chips being optimized for local processing power.

No I won't.

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