Here’s my take on Apple’s roadmap:
Better gaming on the iPhone5 with a touchpad instead of the homebutton. The new iPhone5 will probably have a macbook-like-trackpad instead of the home button. This would be ideal for gaming, which represents the largest revenue generator on the iPhone App Store
Improve MacOS for better touch/gesture support.
- Improve MacOS’s sandboxing and multi-user support
Add save-state-multitasking similar to iOS to MacOS This way, MacOS is more like iOS. It allows the OS / device to be restarted, while application data and state is saved. This is totally transparent to the user. Multi-user support will enable citrix-like application hosting.
Sell a macmini-based home server for applications and filestorage When you are able to store application state, it’s easy to transfer this state to a different machine. We will now have two ways of running an application from a remote server: 1) By using a remote-desktop-like technology 2) By transferring the application state / sandbox over to the local machine.
Both have pros and cons, and it depends on the application, device AND network which solution is appropriate.
Make it possible to use the iPad as a thin client for MacOS When applications are hosted on a macmini, the iPad could be used as a thin client for the application. My connecting the iPad through hdmi to a monitor, the iPad would serve as an input device, but the UI would be the same as the MacOS’s interface. When using the iPad itself as the screen, the application could fire up the iOS interface, while still using the same application state. What this means is that you can take your application onto your iPad, while your laptop or server is still somewhere else in the house.
Dropbox / mobileme / cloud storage Apple will for sure add cloud storage to their portfolio. They already had (mobile me), but it will probably be more like dropbox. Also they’ve already announced you will be able to stream your music from iTunes onto your devices. It’s a natural choice, especially with all the iOS devices next to your main computer.
Add cloud-based application rentals based on thin-client tech If you add up the previous points, it’s easy to see where this is going: Apple will be hosting either full applications, or just the application state, so you can access your application anywhere. Combine this with cloud-storage, and you’ve got everything you need where ever you want it. I personally don’t think that the citrix-like application hosting will be one of the things they will try to sell from the cloud, as it will be difficult to provision and pricing would be unclear. Application-state-hosting will happen.
Use saved-states of the applications to enable movement of the state to various machines / clouds. It would even be possible to use “Expose” to connect to your personal network or cloud, and transfer application state from your your iMac or cloud to your macbook, simply by dragging the application from the shelve.
I think save-state is the best decision Appl made with iOS multitasking, as it empowers so many things.
What do you think?
