It took me a while to realize that this is where Google is headed with ChromeOS/Chromebooks. Ultimately, "applications/apps" will not exist, there will just be the web and all personal computing devices become thin clients. What to use photoshop? great, go to //photoshop.adobe (or something); Office? //office.microsoft; play the latest COD? //callofduty.activision. [EDIT: also note the importance of search in this scenario...]
I think google's bet is that just like CompUSA and other computer retail outlets have died, so too will "app stores" that sell digital equivalents of physical boxed apps. All apps will become services available openly on the web.
It's definitely exciting, though I realize it makes a lot of people scared and there are definitely security risks that need to be kept in mind. But overall I see it as another step in the democratization of access and knowledge. A few hundred years ago, only the privileged had access to resources enabling them to read and write and create things. A few years ago, only those with some serious cash could (legally) purchase a license to operate a copy of Adobe's products. Now, any kid with 100 bucks and a decent laptop can spend 3 months with the entire Adobe catalog available to them. Pretty soon, that "high-powered" hardware requirement will be gone and the market opens up even further and pricing will drop even more.
That's pretty awesome.
What to use Photoshop? Pay a perpetual monthly fee forever, with no control over which version of the software you are using. Adobe jacked up the price this year for the new version despite a lack of new features? Tough, nothing you can do about it. It's either pay up or lose access. The new version is buggy? Tough luck.
Want to modify any of the software on your computer in any way or install any local software? That disables the trusted DRM and none of your remote apps will load anymore because your machine is no longer trusted. (We already have this on Chromebooks for DRM video).
Want to cancel your Microsoft Office subscription? Fine, now you've lost the ability to view any of your documents any more.
Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad, they just shut down the servers forever. Sorry, no refunds.
All your files hosted in the cloud and data mined for terrorist terms, for your safety of course.
All your files hosted in the cloud and data mined to build marketing profiles.
Every piece of software having the ultimate in user lock-in - total control over the users data.
I find it hard to imagine a more dystopian future for software.
You see the reason personal computing exists is because it was people who wanted this level of control and "their own computer" started using these cheezy "calculator chips" to build their own computers. What they could do was a lot less than what the mainframes/minicomputers/workstations could do but you could own your own.
All of those things are still true.
But there is a rub. Today you can go on some warez forum and get a cracked Adobe CSx suite and run it on your machine at home. That feature goes away, Your only option is to run Gimp, and if it doesn't have features you need, then you get to write new features yourself because, well its open and you have the source code.
So the world will change, it always does, but the ability for engineers and hobbyists to have their own computers that do exactly what they want them to do, that won't change.
Sure, the Steve Wozniaks of the world have always had the ability to write their own GIMP plugins or whatever, and you're right: that hasn't changed.
But there were a few decades there where the rest of the world could actually own commercial software, and that had a lot of upsides. Those days are drawing to a close.
(Yes, I know that EULAs attempted to "license" software to you instead of truly letting you own the software. But for all practical purposes, you did at least own it to the extent that it would continue to work even if the software vendor's servers went down, or they decided they didn't like you using their software, or your government decided they didn't like you using the software vendor's software, or whatever.)
Photoshop piracy was the worst thing that ever happened to the GIMP.
What GIMP probably needs is an overhaul that copies what Photoshop does. People understand Photoshop, and it's the industry standard.
From what I can tell the UI's look fairly similar too: https://gtchan1.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/5-gui-photoshop.... http://www.gimpchat.com/files/196_2012-05-12_214936.jpg There's various widgets that contain e.g. tools, layers, history, fonts, tool options; and of course each tool might have its own options.
(Also, the team itself have said in various ways that they'll never have as their goal to be a "Photoshop clone", as I understand it that's an unreachable and thus depressing goal. It's a lot more motivating to simply try to make something that works well than trying to cater to every whim of those who don't want to pay for Photoshop.)
They may look superficially similar, and at a high level have the same tools, but from a fundamental workflow point of view there are too many things that are just very different (non-destructive editing, smart objects etc).
the team itself have said in various ways that they'll never have as their goal to be a "Photoshop clone"
And that would be fine and if they'd done something unique or innovative with the UI and really made it their own. Unfortunately they didn't and they're stuck looking kind of like a half-baked Photoshop clone. And as long as that is kind of what they look like, then that is how they'll be judged.
So does the GIMP look like Photoshop, or does it not?
It's foreign to photoshop users, GIMP is just different. I really don't like those open source software that want to copy some proprietary one. They tend to copy the mistakes of the other software too. Maybe GIMP doesn't have all the features that photoshop has but copying photoshop is not the way to go.
Still not sure why Adobe hasn't gone after the Linux market. They could completely dominate.
Of course, we're offering zero evidence that either position is true, just bald assed assertions. That I vastly prefer multi-window is my only evidence.
>People understand Photoshop, and it's the industry standard.
They've been trained to. It's as intuitive to you as the way home from work. It's as intuitive to me as the way to your house from your job.
That's ironic, given that the latest Gimp (2.8) defaults to a single-window interface. I'm having a hard time adjusting, but this doesn't mean it was a bad idea.
Inkscape on the other hand really is a viable alternative to Illustrator.
Of course I do, and those people will be faced with an uncomfortable choice, suffer the 'free' tool or pay for access to the 'non free' tool. And the people who run the 'non free' tool will use that money to pay engineers to improve it. And the engineers working on the 'free' tool will do so without remuneration or reward other than knowing they built something they like.
- What about when Adobe makes a change when going CS2 => CS3 that I don't like, or that is detrimental to me? If I 'own a copy' I can just continue using it. With 'CS in the cloud' I have to upgrade because that's what Adobe wants.
- To step outside of software for a second, what happens when (e.g.) George Lucas decides that the "special edition" version of Star Wars is the 'real one' and replaces all cloud copies of Star Wars with the special edition version?
Yes, this is huge. The cloud is making our culture ephemeral.
Just yesterday I was playing Escape Velocity Nova, a video game back from 2002. It's an excellent game, and since its initial release, people made tons of mods to it. I heard that Eve Online pretty much copied their story.
I'm pretty sure that if this game was made in a "cloud version", as a service and not a downloadable product, I wouldn't be able to play it today. I couldn't enjoy the story, I couldn't live through experiences that influenced the gaming culture ten years ago. It wouldn't make any economical sense for current copyright owners to maintain such abandonware. It would just disappear into oblivion, like most SaaS startups do after a year.
Not that I'm a supporter of Adobe's cloud strategy, but as of the past 6 month or so you have a choice between using the current version and the previous version. We'll see when the next version comes out if they'll only support two versions or if they'll let you chose any previous cloud supported version.
As it stands two people, one of whom uses Linux/LibreOffice/GIMP and another who uses Windows/MS Office/Photoshop are able (bar some possible formatting issues) to share data and collaborate together because they can share files via dropbox or USB dongles.
Once Photoshop and Office move entirely to the cloud there will no longer necessarily be "files" to share.
[1] Intel used MultiMate for its documents (as did a bunch of lawyers) while nearly everybody in the tech space was using Interleaf. Xerox was trying to be the paperless glue for the middle. We got PostScript out of it, which was an interesting compromise.
Most people will prefer the managed computing experience provided by the cloud, and that's a good thing. I've had to ask "so did you keep backups?" with a sinking heart; and heard "My computers running really slow - can you have a quick look?" too many times.
Not necessarily. Chromebooks are already locked down so that any modification of the software on them means DRM video support is disabled. Its only a small leap from video DRM to software DRM. This will probably be sold to users on the basis of security - we won't let your machine log into your photoshop account to steal/delete your photos if it has been compromised.
Contrast with files, which I own, can open in anything I want and that I can reverse-engineer in order to write a custom app for them.
Now I completely get how crazy that makes people, who argue "I paid money, I got this thing, I own it." but the only reason that it is in a "file" today is because Amazon hasn't figured out how to give you access to it without giving you a file. Nothing in the Adobe announcement changes anything, except that it provides for them, what they consider to be a better implementation of their rights management paradigm. Again, I don't condone or support it, but it's important to note that their thinking hasn't changed, only their implementation has. This also helps them to avoid you reverse engineering their files which they don't like because it allows you to circumvent their rights management tools. Again, I don't condone or support, just report.
So what may happen here is that something which has some value to a person, will be put outside their reach behind a price they are unwilling to pay. I understand that this situation sucks, but on the positive side it adds energy to the 'free' side of the equation because if there really is value there, it is only extractable if stealing is less easy than paying, and paying is at a market price that can support the energy of making it available. That price may be in programmer hours, not necessarily in dollars.
Yes, I understand that and I agree with you here. I'm not complaining that they changed their thinking; I'm saying that their thinking sucks (for the user), and that the more they improve their implementation details, the worse-off we (users) are.
> So what may happen here is that something which has some value to a person, will be put outside their reach behind a price they are unwilling to pay. I understand that this situation sucks (...)
This suckiness is what I'm complaining about.
I need to think about it more to come up with a coherent view of that problem. However, let me share my current perspective.
I grew up in a world where software was owned by me and effectively free. What I needed but couldn't afford I could crack if I cared. Most of the time I didn't care, or there were better free tools. But sometimes it mattered. I learned my graphics skills as a kid on cracked Corel Draw and Photoshop (in the end I switched to Paint.NET + GIMP + Inkscape combo, as I don't want to publish - even for free - things done on "stolen" software, but all those tools are inferior compared to paid ones). I learned my Office skills as a kid on pirated MS Office.
I started programming around 13 years ago. Programming tools were already mostly free at that time (thank you Microsoft for MSVC++2003 Toolkit, though I loved my pirated Visual C++ 6.0). But it's not about piracy, it's about access. I learned how to code because I wanted to make games, and my primary inspiration and motivation throughout the teenage years was the ability to dig in and tweak various games. I knew my way around StarCraft binaries. Hell, my first serious application of Assembly was patching SC using StarGraft. I read UnrealScript files extracted from Unreal Tournament games. I hex-edited saves, tweaked data files, poked and twisted many games. All of this was possible because I owned the data. That is, the files were there, on my hard drive, unprotected. I built my whole career and half of my life on top of that.
To quote pg[0], "It is by poking about inside current technology that hackers get ideas for the next generation. No thanks, intellectual homeowners may say, we don't need any outside help. But they're wrong. The next generation of computer technology has often—perhaps more often than not—been developed by outsiders.".
What I'm really afraid of is that the next generation, the generation of my children, will not be able to poke inside anything, because everything will be accessed remotely. In order to learn and grow I didn't need a credit card when I was 13, but I fear the next generation will not have that luxury.
TL; DR: think of the children.
Say Google Drive supports web intents:
If you have a doc on Google Drive, and you install an intent for a Google competitor word processor in your Google drive, you can open it, edit it on that service, and save it back to Google drive.
It is still true that in the environment we are moving towards, those consumer choices are leading to a situation where _we don't control our own workstations_. Everything you do will be at the forebearance and under the observation of a corporation you pay.
You can say that that's the natural free market consequence of consumer preferences combined with current technology all you want. That is still a scary situation for us as a society, where more and more of our lives involve interacting with software, and we have less and less control over that software.
However this is clearly changing now:
As data, and now functionality, keeps moving towards the cloud, quality goes up again (a polished app running on all kinds of devices), but there's little chance to tinker, to do it your own way.
Or, where would you say Stallman's 4 Freedoms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition) fit in these days?
Yes, Adobe and Microsoft are going to charge you rent. So what? Just use free (as in freedom) software instead. Adobe and Microsoft were never your friends, and if you feel bad about this recent development I don't know why you were using their software in the first place. They were always looking for a way to do this to you, all that's changed is that they've figured out how.
Because without laws regulating the sale of products to private citizens, we'd have chaos? So we need some protections to ensure the rights of users? Like the rights to re-sell used software (or media) etc.
Now, that said, without such reasonable rules in place, levelling the playing field, it's hard to fault companies for trying to give as little and charge as much as they can get away with.
If you buy a hammer, you have a lot of reasonable consumer protection. If you buy a laptop many of the same rules apply -- why shouldn't you have similar protections regarding software?
A hammer isn't going to cease working when the company that sold it goes out of business (or is bought up, or refocuses on a different market) -- why should your office suite? I'm not saying one should be guaranteed upgrades in perpetuity -- but the ability to install the same software on a reasonably similar configuration should be a no-brainer, really. Or be able to run it under an emulator.
But again, these things really needs to be legislated as consumer protection, so some company can't get away with not providing some of these freedoms.
Who says I'm concerned about myself here? Maybe I'm concerned about other people, especially those with less technical understanding who don't fully appreciate what it means for all their files to be locked away on a cloud server.
>They were always looking for a way to do this to you
So we can't complain when bad people do bad things now? Also, I was replying to a post that was celebrating this as the future of all software (and democracy and human knowledge in general it seemed).
> Just use free (as in freedom) software instead.
Recent years have suggested that "software as a service" is the only way to get this money due to rampant piracy. If the free software community doesn't like this state of affairs, they need to step up their game.
UI designers, customer researchers, graphics artists, strategy teams (to set an overall vision) e.t.c. tend to be under-represented compared to other software companies.
I also think that open source software tends to be less innovative, as 'design by committee' isn't something that is followed inside for-profit companies with closed software.
Consider the grandparent post again:
> If the last several decades have shown us anything, it's that the free software movement is excellent at creating some kinds of software (operating systems, development tolls, severs) and generally pretty bad at many other kinds of software (games, content creation software, etc).
This seems to suggest that, if the last several decades have shown us anything, free (as in freedom) software developers are more likely to be willing to write software used for software development, and not very likely to write high quality games or content creation software like Photoshop.
It's well known that those in the free software community are often not paid very well, if at all. Consider the problems OpenSSL has had getting funding, despite millions of people all over the world using it every day.
The people who _are_ writing Photoshop are very much in it for the money, and are taking every step they can to ensure a steady income stream. Look at how Adobe is now trying to rent people Photoshop instead of giving them their own copy.
And that's why things start to suck. What they way "always looking to do" to us is bad, but we had a period of happiness when they couldn't effectively implement their vision.
A software company will make more profit selling its software as a service than a single-fee product. Therefore consumers will find software developed for them in markets which were previously not viable.
To take a personal example: I develop traditional desktop accounting software for the UK market. There is absolutely no way that I could produce a version for India due to piracy. I also cannot produce a version for Ireland because I simply would not get a good return on my investment. But if I provide my accounting software as a service I can capture more of the value my software generates for my users. This would mean people in India and Ireland getting more accounting software choices.
I would see the propagation of SaaS model as advantageous to competition and not detrimental and thus beneficial to all who consume software, as it will reduce the cost to market and make profit models actually deterministic.
I work in a company whose products deal in the structural design for construction. The energies put into retail, licencing, fighting piracy etc. are very off-putting for anyone thinking of starting a software business but they seem to be essential part of selling expensive desktop software. Also, the de-facto standard licencing server solution (I'm looking at you, FlexLM) is ... not so good.
I actually only now start to believe there could emerge viable competitors to Adobe in publishing/graphics design, Microsoft in Office and Autocad in 3D design. The age of the dinosaurs is finally coming to an end. Yay!
To the average consumer it does not matter whether the software lives in the providers server or in the local substrate. It's the added value, usability and the trust in the software that matters.
Adobe's CreativeCloud pricing pisses you off? Fine, start up your own desktop publishing software company, implement, say 20% of the features you need and expand. Of course, race to the bottom is never good but a product that implements say 10% of the Creative Cloud feature set does not need to be as expensive - it's in a totally different segment - and once it has a user base and traction the company can grow, implement new features and products. When this virtualization-as-a service really kicks in it actually will be just as realistic option to start a desktop-equivalent product as making a web-app as the dynamics of propagation _will_be_the_same_ as for any web service. Good products will propagate and creativity will flourish.
Huge proportions of cost of desktop software development are about licencing, fighting bugs in different user desktop configurations, etc, non value-adding, labour intensive things that you need to provide a usable desktop product which are mostly about platform fragmentation. Suddenly you can develop software on top of _only_one_platform_ that will be more or less _stable_ in terms of your core functionality.
People, this is not a catastrophe and return to the age of the mainframe behemoths, this will be a new renaissance (... just as long as the pricing for the core technologies will be such that they do not lock out small time players... fingers crossed).
The only downside here are software patents which probably could and will be used by large companies to fight scary small competitors who will not sell but I'm optimistic their time will go away... at some point.
Between Sketch, Pixelmator, and just designing in CSS/HTML I do not need Photoshop.
I haven't been hampered by DRM, subscriptions, or anything else with these apps/technologies and that is because personal computing is alive and well.
For example: "Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad..." Want to continue using TwitPic? Too bad. Obsolescence happens, companies shut down, products go off the market and cease to be supported every day. This isn't new. If there's enough demand for an alternative, it will happen. Where there's a market, there will be product.
Or: "It's either pay up or lose access." When I stop paying my gym membership I loose access. Nobody complains that "it's either pay up or get fat." Photoshop used to be a product, now its a service. This isn't an "injustice" it's normal business.
Data safety in the cloud though is a reasonable concern. You don't know what's going on with your data on remote servers. But then, most people don't know what's going on with their data on their own machines. We've found ways to implement safety and security on our local machines (monitor for malware etc...), I imagine we will eventually find ways to ensure it on remote machines as well. Maybe.
That is just an illustration of my point really…
The difference is that if the company that makes my local image editing software shuts down tomorrow, I still have all my files and I can still run the software. Eventually I'll have to find a replacement, but I've got a reasonable window of time to do that, and no corporation blackmailing me (and who knows what happens to the data held by defunct companies…).
>This isn't an "injustice" it's normal business.
Business can be, and often is, unethical. Somebody who argues that "we changed the EULA and now you have to pay a month fee or we delete all your data" isn't an injustice is pretty warped in my view. I've come to expect such psychopathy from business types though.
Well, it isn't injustice. But it doesn't change the fact that this sucks, very badly.
The thing about personal computing was that when a company goes out of business, the software they made still remains on machines. It can be 3rd-party-patched. File formats can be reverse-engineered, so that you can use your data with a new program. Software can be cracked, so if a company tries to make you pay too much it is the company, not users, that is going to have a bad day.
All that move towards the cloud serves companies well, but sucks for the user. You don't get to tinker anymore. You don't get to do things your way anymore. Technologically, are being literally enslaved.
Latency / Speed of light is still a major factor in human-quality UX, even with GPU virtualization. Qubes/Genode can isolate "DRM zones" from "freedom zones" on the personal computer. DRM zones can run Adobe / Microsoft / Google / Netflix cloudlets and algos, with local caches that are DRM protected. User benefits from improved UX.
Freedom zones can run open software that secures user data and requires the cloudlets to use network-isolated sandboxes when they need access to user data. If the user wants to sell/lease their data to a cloudlet, then an audited copy is allowed to leave the local PC, moving to the public cloud.
Many permutations are possible in a multi-tenant client architecture. The key is to support the coexistence of open and closed enclaves on the same local device (a home server/bridge), isolated by hardware-assisted security that has an _open_ architecture TCB and root of trust.
Yet I can (and do) still run TextMate 1, OmniFocus 1, LineForm, NewsFire, Office:mac 2011 and Photoshop CS3 on my Mac. Even when it comes to the "cloud", I can still use Skype 4.x on my iPhone which doesn't force a shitty Windows Mobile interface down my throat. It's not that I mind paying for subscriptions, I just don't want my tools to be taken away while I am trying to get work done with them.
Really? The dystopian parts of that vision are already here: laws protecting software as intellectual property and laws prohibiting the circumvention of DRM. The other parts are almost certainly better for the vast majority of users.
This is a "rich get richer" situation that is developing.
The problem with the centralized model is that it rather fucks over even people in developing or under-developed countries, and also places like, say, South Africa where broadband speeds are internally decent but are notoriously slow to the rest of the planet.
Here in Aberdeen, when I walk down the street, it varies from HSDPA to GPRS. There's occasionally University WiFi, but that only helps if I'm near a University building. This access is far from constant or consistently speedy.
History proved that these things get cheaper and become accessible to the masses.
Meanwhile, kids in Egypt who don't have mobile broadband sit at a desk in an internet cafe and photoshop away on their cheap chromebook.
I don't see what the problem is?
I can see two things happening: it increases the popularity of FLOSS software in such countries and/or companies will adjust the monthly subscription fee to be proportional to e.g. the median income.
Anyway, I think thinks can be said for both models. Regardless my worries about SaaS, I also like always having the latest version, not having to install and maintain programs, etc.
-- http://www.loper-os.org/?p=44
Having no local state is a wonderful vision. I see why that makes you excited, but "the cloud" is the death of programmatic computing.
What we should move towards is personal servers, either physical machines or (for 98% of the population) some kind of "gmail for servers" like https://sandstorm.io/.
Except this isn't the web at all, this is some closed Google-only internet. This isn't the death of personal computing, this is the death of the web.
It should be pretty clear by now to most techies that Chrome* is the neoMSIE.
We should stop applauding these complete violations of web standards. This is the opposite of awesome.
The direction the web is heading these days literally makes me sad: less open, less standards-based, less cross platform. Everything which made the web a good thing in the first place is being driven away by.
Also, what exactly makes Chrome the "neoMSIE"?
Well, the other troubling aspect of getting all your software from the network is that you don't own anything. Adobe can end your access to the software if they just decide to. If you have paid, you might be able to sue them for the software back or you might get damages but neither will help if you have a job on a tight deadline.
1) Remote computing doesn't have to use X11. The local machine can do some of the lifting. Wolfram Alpha on mobile phones is a good example of this- a server does the crunching, but neither is the client side a dumb terminal.
2) I cross my fingers that one day latency will be prioritized more... IMO the majority of latency problems are not caused by the limits of physics, but rather the simple fact that not many people care about it.
The theoretical peak ping speed across the USA & back is something like 20ms, an entirely reasonable figure for remote computing- if only it was ever anywhere close to realized.
If you look at network QoS research in the past 20 years, you'll see that a lot of people do care. It's just not an easy problem to solve.
The one thing I could see giving a resurgence to "off-line" for mainstream use, is latency -- more concretely -- the low latency tolerance of VR. But then again, as long as you can stream enough data/logic to the "terminal" -- even that shouldn't be a problem.
I do hope the industry can help shift things towards locally cacheable/locally hostable solutions, though. I'd much rather run some "cloud" office suite on my server, with the option of taking it with me off-line from time to time (and then perhaps sync up whenever I'm on-line) -- than having my data on a third-party server. Or servers.
I'm afraid the more likely future, is a future where a majority of users are locked-in to the whims of mega-corps -- and the scariest part of that, is that those that are leading in providing "cloud" services actually have a business model that centres around (ab)using the data, not charging for the services they provide.
The economics are pretty sweet, given the marginal cost of one additional subscriber to a cloud 'hosted' environment. Google Drive / Drop box gets the storage requirement out of the way. Company X, acquires/operates a small server farm connected with a generic 10G pipe to the 'web' (this is an off the self config at places like Switch in Las Vegas). Sign up a bunch of subscribers where you have a 'free' tier to sop up excess compute and a paid tier for folks who care enough about response times to pay for them.
The dependency on the network has always been troubling, but once the network is like house 'power'. so many things one does depend on the house having power available, making it a requirement becomes less and less onerous. Combined with things that make traveling with data annoying (like cross border inspections) and I can see this as the future of application level computing for a lot of things.
Interesting that terminals are the future once again.