An “article mentioned how today’s operating systems may be behind the times”:http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/are-todays-operating-systems-behind-the-times/. In a way, I agree with it. I was an instant fanboy when I first picked up Neuromancer by William Gibson. I did what I could to get every bit of “Cyberpunk”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk I could. To think, back in the 80′s that it was far fetched to have a PDA that played video in full color. To think that there’d be cellphones that wouldn’t also be used as a lethal weapon, that could play all sorts of media, not just make phone calls.

But in the here and now, we have PDA’s that plays full video, that can be your music player and can even access the Internet via Wi-Fi. But that’s not all, we also have cellphones that are PDA’s and some that redefine the user experience, making it a wonderful tool not just for making phone calls. However, we don’t have Cyberspace decks that use neural interfaces or fingertip sensors. We don’t share a “consensual hallucination” to surf through the Internet, we still use monitors, we still use two dimensional interfaces to work with our data. While it would be great to have Cyberspace decks and to have full blow three dimensional operating systems, I don’t think we’re all that far behind.

The main feature that I think is great with the upcoming “Leopard OSX”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/ is the “Quick Look”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/quicklook.html feature that allows you to preview a file before actually opening it. Not only does this work for images, text files and spreadsheets, but even video files. Couple this with the “Cover Flow”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/finder.html method of browsing through files and you have a pretty slick interface. It’s glitzy, sure, but also brings the act of locating a file and interacting with it closer. The next thing that I’d love to see is not dealing with a “window”.

If they match this to a continuous connection to the Internet, this would be on the right path to getting closer to a Cyberspace. Things are moving slowly, but what I’m seeing with Leopard is step in the right direction.

I just can’t wait to “jack in.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.