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The End of .Mac and Google Apps?
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat May 05, 2007 08:20 AM
from the days-of-futures-past dept.
from the days-of-futures-past dept.
mattnyc99 writes "In his weekly tech column for Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene predicts that everyone will have a home server to network their house within 10 years—rendering Apple's .Mac accounts and Google's productivity software useless. As prices for products like HP's MediaSmart Server drop and as processing power becomes more pervasive, Derene says, 'you'll ultimately need a centralized server—that high-powered traffic cop—to coordinate the non-stop exchange of information between your new multitude of devices.'"
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US's Slow Embrace of Information Technology 210 comments
mattnyc99 writes "To motivate his new column, Popular Mechanics' Glenn Derene takes research data from a discussion here of his last column. He analyzes a new study released this week — revealing that fully 49 percent of Americans 'only occasionally use modern gadgetry' — to compare the rise of the PC with that of the TV and ask a big question: What keeps the most important and powerful communication tool since the telephone from being universally embraced?"
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Been there, done that (Score:3, Interesting)
Those who don't understand Plan 9 are doomed to reinvent it, poorly.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Been there, done that (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Been there, done that (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called the internet. Those who don't understand it are doomed to reinvent it, badly.
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Brought to you by (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One word: privacy. Oh, another word: performance. Most home networks are 100 Mbits/sec while the internet connection is typically less than 1 Mbit/sec, two orders of magnitude less. This relative difference will remain for the forseeable future as home networks move to GigE while broadband speeds slowly increase into the tens of megabits. Think high resolution photos and video fi
Re:Brought to you by (Score:4, Insightful)
My flatmates and I had a server running in our living room all through uni. At first we used it to share our ADSL connection, which was accessed with a PCI modem that our ISP provided. We used it as a Quake server and a file and ssh server after that, so when we bought a wireless NAT router we kept it around.
In my last year of uni, I was working in a special lab where we were allowed to bring in our own laptops and connect to the university network. This was all by special provision, and we were behind an additional firewall. POP, SMTP and IMAP were all blocked, so were were unable to access email services not only from the internet, but even from elsewhere in the same department. So we set up an email service on our living room server, that would check all our accounts and provide IMAP access when at home, and Horde webmail access when we were in uni.
It wasn't an ideal solution, because Horde was difficult to set up and use, and very slow, mainly because although we had close to 8mb downstream, we were still on 512mb upstream. If this kind of approach is to take off with ordinary users, there needs to be a slot-in solution, and upstream speeds need to come closer into line with downstream. The other issue was power consumption. In these days where we're being told to consume less energy, an always-on machine in the house isn't going to look attractive.
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that's moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
.mac is history... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah, home servers, unless they are exposed to the Internet, do not give you the ability to access your data from anywhere there's connectivity. I dread to think what would happen in an Internet where you have home servers everywhere. Particularly home servers running WINDOWS. The only folks who would be happy in a situation like that would be Russian pr0
Re:that's moronic (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:that's moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And will those servers run Dunken Fuken Forever?
There is no reason we can't have that setup now. The only problem is that ISPs don't want it. So, in the future will ISPs be different, have competition, or what?
Re:that's moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if people have these servers, they probably won't have redundant power supplies, access to multiple backbones, automatic backup, or uptime guarantees from the ISP.
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Re:that's moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
And you really think Joe User is going to administer his own email server instead of using Gmail?
Even if Apple were to develop "Mail Server for Idiots" and you could just plop it onto the IPv6 network, it would still require some administration, to set up accounts, deal with over-quota family members, etc. On the client side, either Joe will have to get a domain name or type in an IPv6 address every time he wants to get his mail remotely, rather than typing "gmail.com." All of that takes time and brainpower that most people want to use elsewhere. Furthermore, Joe's home server is a WHOLE LOT more likely to lose his data than Google is, since Joe never wants to take the time to back up.
Most consumers will use home servers to store media libraries. In the IPv6 era a few more may use them for remotely accessible services like email and calendars, but not many. It just takes unnecessary time and effort, especially for someone who just doesn't care about technology.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Says who? I run my own home-servers, and even a very popular web app. I used to rely on them for email service, but I transitioned to GMail instead. Why?
Quality of Service
Having dedicated staff ensuring that my email is running smoothly, is upgraded regularly with the latest features, has enough bandwidth and i/o to respond quickly, and is not vulnerable to attack is worth a lot more than the value of running my own
Re:that's moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think things would head in the direction of personal servers. Now, I think the trend will be in the other direction. More web-based apps, more hosted services. Why? Basically, because it provides huge economies of scale, in terms of both infrastructure and manpower.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I use servers heavily in my home... for dumb storage, ftp, serving webs, VNC access to apps I don't want to lug around, an Exchange server, a couple streaming media apps, and a smattering of other misc crap. I have over 3TB of storag
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://images.google.com/ [google.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh shit, did I just post that out loud?
Re:that's moronic (Score:5, Funny)
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In the long run ... (Score:3, Funny)
That's not what TFA says (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm, the summary says we'll have home servers "rendering Apple's .Mac accourendering Apple's .Mac accounts and Google's productivity
software uselessnts and Google's productivity software
useless".
But TFA's only mention of Google or .Mac says:
which is not the same thing at all.
Re:That's not what TFA says (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The functionality is essentially the same, given broadband, the only difference being problems when the connection is down. Paying for a physical home server and maintaining it more than offsets that cost.
2. Home users don't have the same misgivings that corporations have with hosting their data remotely, especially if the remote hosting solution is more convenient. And it will be. So essentially the only argument against remote hosting is eliminated for home users.
Google's got the right approach, Microsoft with Home Server will be proven wrong. My 2 cents.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The future is in rich media. People are amassing vast volumes of data every day. The future is a system in which they can access all of the data instantaneously. The webbandwidth curve and the home storage capacity are not in sync. This is why it's still a hastle to upload a 100MB file but the average user seems to have 100GB of movies.
Just my My Documents folder is something like 60GB. There is no way I'm going to upload
What a dumb assessment (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously as things change they'll evolve their services to meet demand.
Well, and I predict... (Score:3, Insightful)
doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
From Popular Mechanics (Score:5, Funny)
* I have a landing pad built into the roof of my house for my flying car.
* When I need to get to Europe from New York, I take the subway to a special terminal that connects me to a train that shoots under the Atlantic at thousands of miles per hour in a vacuum.
* On the rare instances I don't take the super train, I take a Bell Osprey derivative shuttle to the local airport where I don't even need to get out of my seat, because it follows a track built into the shuttle and the airport and automatically zips me into my waiting hypersonic sub-orbital jetliner (which, for some reason, seems to go nowhere but Tokyo).
* I can fix my hot water heater by removing the broken heating element and replacing it with a new one from the hardware store. Possibly the most ridiculous prediction/claim of all.
I like their enthusiasm, and the pictures and ads are great, but I'm not quite ready to start shorting stock in companies based on a Popular Mechanics prediction.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And who will run them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those aren't your grandma's apps... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) it is someone else's responsibility to back it up, cluster it, load balance it, and improve it,
2) it is social, i can include other people in on my document edits easily,
3) i can effortlessly access it from anywhere, be it uni, work, home or a cafe.
Home based servers currently have none of the above, and until we get cheap at home clustering and easy ability to host apps on home adsl we still wont.
Assertions Straight out of his ass (Score:5, Insightful)
No one can argue against home media servers driving innovation into the household, especially around automation and media management - but to displace software as a service? GoogleApps? I don't even in the slightest see where these two things correlate.
GoogleApps and
Glenn literally did 2 things.
1. Plugged HP's products (successfully)
2. Showed how absolutely absurd some columists can be (successfully)
But Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather let the guys at Google provide my word processor without my having to find room for another plug in my power strip. I've had enough DIY in my life. But y'all feel free.
Useless? (Score:4, Insightful)
mindless drivel about the future of computers (Score:5, Insightful)
No one will buy desktop PCs. in 2017 everything will be similar to what we call a laptop today. Data won't be stored on the laptops. Some people will have servers at home, but these people will be eccentric folks like us that host our own web, mail, et cetera in 2007 -- the fringe users. Everyone else will store their data online somewhere. Bandwidth will be charged by the pound instead of flat rate, but it will be very afforadable -- copying a terabyte to home won't cause more than a second of consideration. People will still have workstation caliber desktops, but those will be specialized machines much as they are today, overpowered for a certain task. By 2017, ipv6 is finally mainstream but just barely. Mobile devices will have aggregated down into a single device-- music, cell, radio, visual-- everyone will have the same typical device they carry that does everything, and it will work well. By then, everything will be aware of your biostats if you let it, so your music can follow your general mood, et cetera. They won't be psychic, just dumbly intelligent. Other than that, we decided that technology will be a lot less visible-- as it gets good/small enough to start hiding away in things, so it shall. Presentation will lose its glamour for the most part, and homes will actually look less teched out like they did before the 80s rose.
I'd love to hear other people's imagination reply to these inevitably wrong projections
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The mobile landscape outside of the home, though, will be heavily dependent on how batteries develop. Without some breakthrough
I doubt it. What happends when it breaks. (Score:3, Insightful)
This would have been a good idea 10 years ago, where most internet was Dialup and Slow and most people had Desktop that they did work from home, but today it is a case of too little to late. We don't want a server anymore We want someone else to have a server and us to have access to it, and not worry about maintaining it.
Home-Based Servers Versus Hosted Apps (Score:4, Insightful)
Similarly the same goes for hosted apps. It's great they are backing it up, but remember, it only takes one rogue employee to sell your secrets to your competitor. If you are a business storing business-related documents on a hosted service you are at the mercy of the hosted company. You can say "it won't happen because of XYZ" all you want, but again it only takes one rogue employee working for the hosting company. Furthermore, if you are a public company or deal with sensitive information -- forget about it -- unless you want to be out of business tomorrow.
Centralized storage and data manipulation is the key -- whether that be in the home or the workplace. We are just now entering into this market and I think we are going to see some really good innovations come of it.
And, personally, yes I've tried out the Beta of Windows Home Server. My thoughts? I love it. It has a few features missing, but when it goes "gold" I plan on switching my home server over to it.
Non-Technical hurdles ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Trends against this (Score:5, Insightful)
There are strong political and commercial interests who activily oppose such a vision. First, there are the telcoms and cable companies who want to be gatekeepers to people's email and maintain monopolies on other services as well. Try setting up an email server on a residential service, and getting it both to successfully send email without interference by your isp, and having your email messages "accepted" by existing services, regardless of whether you have domain keys setup on your dns, etc, and you will see some of these forces in action.
As for media servers that may feed media where you want it on demand. I imagine if the RIAA and similar gangs can secure root access to your shiny new internet connected media server, say through trussed computing, and control where you are allowed to listen to your own music, along with an automated billing service, maybe then they may promote it rather than activily oppose such a vision. I could imagine such gangs buying laws that state operating "unlicensed" media servers is "intent to infringe" or some other similar kind of nonsense.
Finally, the traditional media providers and a particular software monopoly prefer a captive internet "consumer" model, starting with asymetric speeds, cemented by restrictive use contracts and finding common interest with governmental desires for increasingly filtered services, whether for imagined security threats or for unpopular governments keeping tabs on restless populations. Home servers where people can be liberated as true publishers and equals as information producers, rather than reduced to mear consumers captive to external hosted sites for what may become an ever decreasing set of tolerated forms of expression and activities, is certainly not in their agenda.
Predicting stuff that already happened (Score:3, Insightful)
Those things have been computers since at least ten years.
Except alarm clock, because turning them into computers would be utterly pointless, so it didn't happen.
That all this junk would be networked has also been predicted a long time ago, and it just doesn't make sense.
10 years? How about today? (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple of things are a bit kludgey because I don't have a truly static IP; but that is not too far in the future. Really the only downside with that is I have to send my email out through my ISP's SMTP rather than directly.
The advantages over Google etc. are essentially unlimited space (I have 2 TB online right now) and very very fast access to the content, and I have control over the features of my setup. The disadvantage is setting up a reliable backup strategy takes some time and effort.
A year ago I used a hosting service for many of these features, but snce Cablevision made it's Boost service available with unblocked ports and dynamic DNS I moved everything to my home server.
Open protocols to sync devices (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a Mac user. But its dawned on me how reliant devices are on Windows to sync up and upload/download your information. Cell phones will be a heck of a lot more common in the future. Shoudn't I be able to store my voicemails, text messages etc on my own computer rather than the carrier's networks quickly, easily and cheaply? I've looked at getting a Blackberry but, frankly, if it doens't work well on my Mac where all my business contacts are stored, I'm not about to start using Windows (and buy a new computer have a G5 so can't dual boot) just to use a Blackberry.
Won't happen. (Score:3, Insightful)
O RLY? Tell it to the ISPs / telecoms (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously this idiot doesn't have broadband access from a US telecom (DSL) or cable company. Every single one of them explicitly forbid any sort of "server", and enforce it by blocking nearly every port from 1-1024.
My ISP, OptimumOnline, is a great example; for years I've been getting around their blocks by using high ports and/or ssh tunneling, but just last month they essentially NATted the whole network -- I can't ssh to my home box, no matter what port; Hell, I can't even ping the thing.
Re:Not web based... (Score:5, Insightful)
su root /etc/apache2.conf
:wq
vi
i
listen 8000
listen 8080
apache2ctl restart
There - fixed it for ya.
now type http://examplehomeserver.com:8000/ [examplehomeserver.com] or http://examplehomeserver.com:8080/ [examplehomeserver.com]
BTW - The article is wrong - not everyone will be running a home server in 10 years. Most people don't want to be bothered, and won't want to spend the extra $$$ on electricity, etc. Cheaper and easier to just have one family member/friend run a linux/bsd box and offer user accounts with ssh, sftp, and ~usr/public_html access (or symlink /home/user/public_html /htdocs/user for people who can't figure out how to type a tilde.
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Re:Not web based... (Score:5, Funny)
I have to guide people through typing a colon key every couple of days and 99% don't know what I mean.
"OK, in the host name box, type our domain name followed by a colon, then the number 1"
"Yes, the colon key, hold down your shift key - thats the big key with the up arrows on it - then press the colon key, its the one with with the 2 dots, its next to the "L" key."
Invariably (after hearing them rustling to put the phone on their shoulder) they manage to type a semi colon.
I hope I never have to try anything more complex with my users.
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Re:Router/Server (Score:5, Funny)
It's called "Windows Botnet Home Server Edition"
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