Wouldn’t it be nice if you were able to take your whole computer - with all your files, applications, preferences, bookmarks, and everything else - with you on a device the size of a deck of cards? No “desktop” and “laptop”: just a single device that enables you to do any sort of computing you want, whenever you want, wherever you want.

Once upon a time such an idea was pretty far-fetched. But with the advent of the iPhone (and similar devices), it all seems a lot more possible.

In fact, I see only one major hurdle before the above can become a reality: the creation of a context-sensitive operating system.

What do I mean by context-sensitive? Continuing with the iPhone example, let’s say that rather than having only the iPhone’s native OS installed, it also had a full-blown version of Mac OS X installed. Under this scenario, a person could be walking around with their iPhone and all its nifty features just like they’re used to, and when they get home they could set that device in a dock and poof - it would switch over to Mac OS X and now the person is interacting with their “phone” via a full monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

So the “context” in a context-sensitive OS would be location: if you’re using your device on the go, you get a slimmed down version of the OS, optimized for a smaller screen, ease of “limited fingers” use, and conservation of battery life. When you’re sitting at your desk, then you get a more full-fledged flavor of the OS, allowing you to do all those things you normally do with a computer.

Of course, having two parallel operating systems on the same device wouldn’t exactly be a “seamless” solution for enabling context sensitivity. Ideally, an OS would be designed such that it was able to, in real-time, enable and disable functionality and features depending on the current use case of the device. This context information would also be passed along to running applications, allowing them to similarly adjust their feature sets and how their user interface is presented.

While this would create some interesting challenges for programmers, they wouldn’t necessarily be “new” challenges: essentially it’s the same as web developers creating page views for both “regular” web browsing and mobile web browsing. The difference is one of scale: rather than creating variable user views for a single web page, we’d be creating variable views for an entire OS - and enabling applications running within that OS to do the same thing.

Once that degree of flexibility has been achieved, the door will be open for the creation of a truly portable computer. You’ll be at home, with various web pages, documents, and video or music files open, and you’ll realize you’re late for work - so you’ll grab your “computer,” put it in your pocket, and head out the door. Later, on the subway or at work, you’ll go back to that device and all the same files will be there, allowing you to pick up right where you left off. And life will be good. :-)

2 Responses To “A Truly Portable Computer”

1. nhelder   2008.10.21, 3:12 pm
   

   Admittedly, an iPhone (or any other mobile device on the market) doesn’t have nearly enough hard drive space to hold all of your documents. Nor does it have enough RAM, processing power, or video hardware to be act as a full computer.

   But there are workarounds for those (current) shortcomings. For instance, a while back it was argued that the Mac Mini had the necessary components to act as a dock for your iPod/iPhone. So, there you go: rather than putting your iPhone in a passive dock when you get home, you dock it to something like the Mini that provides you with the extra hardware needed to run your full-blown OS and applications, and to store your additional documents.

   One could also design a “Mini” in the shape of a laptop. So, if you were on the go with your iPhone but wanted to be able to use a slightly larger screen, keyboard, and additional OS features, all you’d have to do is slide your iPhone into the side of a laptop-like device and you’re off to the races.

   The biggest trick to going the “dock” route? - creating an interface between the device and the dock that allows real-time transfer of running threads from one processor and memory context to another. Now that sounds like a fun project! ;-)

2. nhelder   2009.01.03, 12:06 pm
   

   For simplicity’s sake, I limited the above discussion to Apple’s line of products. But of course, there are other major competitors that are in a position to create the “truly” portable computer. One of those other competitors, without question, is Google.

   And as it turns out, Google’s Android operating system is much further along the path of being able to establish “context” than has previously been published. Specifically, during a project to get Android running on a laptop, it was noticed that that OS supports different product policies, which can be used to vary the way the OS behaves depending on the device that’s currently in use.

   Presumably, these different policies for “phone” and “mid” (mobile internet device; e.g., a laptop) are currently only applicable during compile time, and couldn’t be employed to switch between different device formats in real-time. But, it shows that there are programmers out there that are starting to design OSes that are able to support multiple devices with a single code base - which would be a big step towards the sort of portable computer described at the opening of this thread.

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