Entelligence: Stains on the sleeve of my operating system
By Michael Gartenberg 
posted August 13th 2009 6:45PM
posted August 13th 2009 6:45PM
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
I originally started this column on my take on what an Apple tablet might be (I literally dreamed about it and started to write it down when I woke up). I was really into it, which explains why I didn't save it as I wrote. I think you can see where this is going.
Like a cartoon character who notices that he's no longer standing on solid ground and suddenly begins to fall, I reached over to save, but was too late. My trusty XP install suddenly blue screened. Muttering just a few choice words, I rebooted, only to blue screen again. No problem, there's always "safe mode." Too bad safe mode blue screened as well. With little hope of getting anything recovered, I gave up, fired up my Mac and started from scratch. It's not the first time this has happened to me, where for some reason or another I've lost work on my computer. I suspect it's happened to a few of you out there too.
But this latest bad experience changed my thought process from Apple tablets to what's wrong with the whole PC landscape and today's operating systems.
On the eve of the Windows 7 and Snow Leopard launches (which respectively appear to be the best efforts yet from Microsoft and Apple), the basic platforms we all use remain products that are largely unchanged from concepts introduced decades ago, regardless of all their speed enhancements and evolutionary changes,. It doesn't matter if you're running some flavor of Windows, UNIX, Mac OS X or Linux -- this isn't about OS wars. Every modern PC and operating system retains the flaws of initial product designs that go way back to a time when compromises were needed because system resources were scarce. It's a little like the urban legend about a garment vendor who sent a designer coat overseas to be copied, only to get back 10,000 coats with an identical stain on the sleeve. Yes, PCs initially had to be told to save and it would have been ludicrous to try and track revisions on an 88KB floppy disk. But all that should be history by now.
There have actually been some pretty interesting attempts in the past, at least conceptually, to change things. PenPoint from Go used a unique set of system wide gestures to control the device and had an architecture to allow for documents nested within documents that could be zoomed in and out. Apple's Newton OS was one of the first operating systems to save everything created by default. The SwyftCard created by the late Jeff Raskin could take an Apple IIe and go from cold boot to where you left off in six seconds. (Hit the image for the full-size ad.)
Isn't it past time for hierarchal file folders that attempt to re-recreate my filing cabinet? Even with universal search, there has to be a better way to store and retrieve information. Why, for example, does almost every program force users to save their work? Going from CTRL-KD as the "save to" command in WordStar to Ctrl-S isn't much of an achievement. Why can't we build on a real-world model that keeps everything I create by default, and only throws away changes? You can even extend the metaphor and keep every revision, since modern hard drives are hundreds of gigabytes in size. Yet with release after release, vendors add features that no one uses or cares about -- a problem that reached a nadir with the Microsoft Office Assistant, which was so universally reviled that Microsoft actually sent out press releases announcing Clippy's death when it was removed.
Yes, I know there are settings to allow for things like auto-save, but why are the default settings for applications often designed to punish users who don't follow the programmers' rules or understand the interface? Don't get me wrong -- we're making progress, but most of that progress has been restricted to mobile platforms. webOS, iPhone OS and Android all have driven some degree of innovation beyond the PC desktop. Even apps are tracking that way: Tweetie, one of the most popular Twitter apps, debuted for the iPhone before it was available for Mac OS. Now we need to bring some OS-level innovations back to the PC desktop and take personal computing to the next level as well.
One reason no one has been able to unseat Microsoft from desktop operating system dominance is that no one has offered a fundamentally different product that actually changes some of these longstanding issues. Although there are arguably better products out there, the stains on the sleeve are still there, and it's time for some revolutionary innovation that will truly change the computing experience. What do you think -- are today's platforms really revolutionary or are there still too many throwbacks to ideas that are thirty years old?
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net, and he can be emailed at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
Like a cartoon character who notices that he's no longer standing on solid ground and suddenly begins to fall, I reached over to save, but was too late. My trusty XP install suddenly blue screened. Muttering just a few choice words, I rebooted, only to blue screen again. No problem, there's always "safe mode." Too bad safe mode blue screened as well. With little hope of getting anything recovered, I gave up, fired up my Mac and started from scratch. It's not the first time this has happened to me, where for some reason or another I've lost work on my computer. I suspect it's happened to a few of you out there too.
But this latest bad experience changed my thought process from Apple tablets to what's wrong with the whole PC landscape and today's operating systems.
On the eve of the Windows 7 and Snow Leopard launches (which respectively appear to be the best efforts yet from Microsoft and Apple), the basic platforms we all use remain products that are largely unchanged from concepts introduced decades ago, regardless of all their speed enhancements and evolutionary changes,. It doesn't matter if you're running some flavor of Windows, UNIX, Mac OS X or Linux -- this isn't about OS wars. Every modern PC and operating system retains the flaws of initial product designs that go way back to a time when compromises were needed because system resources were scarce. It's a little like the urban legend about a garment vendor who sent a designer coat overseas to be copied, only to get back 10,000 coats with an identical stain on the sleeve. Yes, PCs initially had to be told to save and it would have been ludicrous to try and track revisions on an 88KB floppy disk. But all that should be history by now.
There have actually been some pretty interesting attempts in the past, at least conceptually, to change things. PenPoint from Go used a unique set of system wide gestures to control the device and had an architecture to allow for documents nested within documents that could be zoomed in and out. Apple's Newton OS was one of the first operating systems to save everything created by default. The SwyftCard created by the late Jeff Raskin could take an Apple IIe and go from cold boot to where you left off in six seconds. (Hit the image for the full-size ad.)Isn't it past time for hierarchal file folders that attempt to re-recreate my filing cabinet? Even with universal search, there has to be a better way to store and retrieve information. Why, for example, does almost every program force users to save their work? Going from CTRL-KD as the "save to" command in WordStar to Ctrl-S isn't much of an achievement. Why can't we build on a real-world model that keeps everything I create by default, and only throws away changes? You can even extend the metaphor and keep every revision, since modern hard drives are hundreds of gigabytes in size. Yet with release after release, vendors add features that no one uses or cares about -- a problem that reached a nadir with the Microsoft Office Assistant, which was so universally reviled that Microsoft actually sent out press releases announcing Clippy's death when it was removed.
Yes, I know there are settings to allow for things like auto-save, but why are the default settings for applications often designed to punish users who don't follow the programmers' rules or understand the interface? Don't get me wrong -- we're making progress, but most of that progress has been restricted to mobile platforms. webOS, iPhone OS and Android all have driven some degree of innovation beyond the PC desktop. Even apps are tracking that way: Tweetie, one of the most popular Twitter apps, debuted for the iPhone before it was available for Mac OS. Now we need to bring some OS-level innovations back to the PC desktop and take personal computing to the next level as well.
One reason no one has been able to unseat Microsoft from desktop operating system dominance is that no one has offered a fundamentally different product that actually changes some of these longstanding issues. Although there are arguably better products out there, the stains on the sleeve are still there, and it's time for some revolutionary innovation that will truly change the computing experience. What do you think -- are today's platforms really revolutionary or are there still too many throwbacks to ideas that are thirty years old?
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net, and he can be emailed at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned KDE 4 or the upcoming GNOME 3. Both work to re-envision the desktop, how one interacts with it (Plasma and GNOME Shell), how all your data is managed and presented (Nepomuk, Akonadi, and Zeitgeist), etc. Of course, to make the best of these innovations, you have to change your workflow (for the better, trust me) and go beyond "windows in the task bar", "icons in the dock", and "files in folders". Hopefully very soon (like around 2 years), we'll see technologies like Nepomuk (at least) integrated into most of the applications one uses in both desktop environments. I look forward to the impending desktop revolution, whether the majority of people (computer illiterate and/or closed-minded and/or misinformed as they are) move to it or not. If you're not familiar with these technologies, I encourage you to do a little Googling. With the exception of Zeitgeist and GNOME Shell, all else is already integrated and implemented to some extent. Moreover, they all are evolving rapidly and have a HUGE amount of untapped potential left in them. If you're a Mac-diehard or Windows-diehard, then KDE4 also has native installers for you, though they may be somewhat behind the Linux packages and are considered (for now) experimental by the community (Windows, at the time of this writing, is up-to-date with KDE 4.3).
Another reason emacs is the ultimate OS.
Well, it will be in a few years when we finally get threads -_-
It's funny how one person wants the OS to become more and more powerful, yet the same writers lamented how resource intense Vista was. Microsoft takes a step back and now the writers lament how resources are being wasted idling.......
Make up your minds!!!!
Do you want your OS to be a single blade or do you want your OS to be a Multi tool??
"to what's wrong with the whole PC landscape and today's operating systems."
Windows XP is 8 years olds and not part of today's operating systems.
It's simple.
There are no perfect operating systems right out of the box.
People will always whine about how something is missing from one OS that another has and when they try that one, they'll miss things the previous OS had.
I have been using Windows XP since it came out with BSOD only appearing when I want to push my system and install custom modded drivers. I totally skipped over Windows Vista. I have also been using Linux for the past few years as well. I gave MacOS a go.
What came out of it is that I still stuck to Windows XP. Sure, out of the box, it's a pathetic excuse for an Operating System. It's pretty much outdated. But it is my choice to what I want to do with it after that.
I liked OSX's Quicksilver and Ubuntu's Gnome, so I installed Launchy. I liked Conky on Linux, so I installed Rainmeter. I liked the idea of a dock that OSX had, so I tried it on for a while using ObjectDock (while also allowed me to have my system tray on my dock while getting rid of my Windows XP taskbar). I didn't like the default themes on Windows XP so I found resources to add new themes. I slowly customised my XP to how I saw the perfect OS as.
The point really is that I stopped whining about which OS is better and just asked myself "What can I do with what I have?" Most people and especially people who call themselves geeks don't do this. They are just whiny little bitches who don't even know how to go about trying to understand what their system can or cannot do.
Use what's most comfortable for you. Use it because it WORKS for you. Windows has always worked for me (as well as Linux when I'm on the go on my netbook). If you find something lacking, chances are, someone else did to, and that someone else probably found a way around it.
"Like a cartoon character who notices that he's no longer standing on solid ground and suddenly begins to fall, I reached over to save, but was too late. My trusty XP install suddenly blue screened. Muttering just a few choice words, I rebooted, only to blue screen again. No problem, there's always "safe mode." Too bad safe mode blue screened as well. With little hope of getting anything recovered, I gave up, fired up my Mac and started from scratch. It's not the first time this has happened to me, where for some reason or another I've lost work on my computer. I suspect it's happened to a few of you out there too."
If you don't keep a current back-up you are a complete idiot, also if you plug your HDD into another PC I think you'll find all your documents safe and sound.
Blue screens like you describe are a pretty obvious HARDWARE FAULT they have very little to do with the OS.
Yeah, I agree. It would have been trivial to retrieve his document or the autosaved document (unless he turned autosave off).
The article also mentions saving all revisions to a document, which you can easily do by turning on the review tools in Microsoft Office.
Asking an operating system to be in charge of saving every type of document from every program you run is a major ask. This would require either every program to be specially written to register with a component of the OS about what and how it writes files and where in memory it stores the 'live' version, or the OS to take images of the programs entire memory space. It is much simpler for each program to manage its own autosave implementation.
It seem that Michael Gartenberg has dropped the ball and demonstrated his lack of technical knowledge or simply used a poor example to start off his article.
didn't even read the article, if you're bsod that often, it just means you're not taking care of your machine. if your mac kernel panic'd and you lost your work i hardly doubt you'd have thought to write this article.
xp user, 3 bsod's in 9 years of owning my own computer, and they were all the fault of the integrated graphics on my old dell dimension.
and if you want the perfect OS, boot up gentoo and compile it yourself, otherwise don't complain or we can call you lazy.
this is the first intelligent article on the dreadful state of current OS's that I have read in a very long time, finally someone who sees how little difference there is from today and 30 years ago!
Did you even use computers 30 years ago? That is an absurd statement. OS today do not look anything like those from even 20 years ago.
In the late 1980s, the macintosh computer was the only real user-friendly personal computer. I have bad memories from before that of sorting through piles of floppy disks and cassette tapes. HDD? Not on a personal computer. Autosave? You were luck if you could even save something on purpose.
In the early 1990s, DOS was the way to go, and Win 3.1 was just a lame attempt at a desktop organization scheme. I preferred to just use DOS. Win95 (onl 14 years ago) was probably the first useable windows operating system in existance, and was a welcome change.
What word processor are you even running?
Current versions of Microsoft Word autosave by default and the option has been in the application since at least version 95a: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/107686 If that's not good enough, you can use OneNote; It saves as you type. Heck, even the freeware OpenOffice autosaves every 15 minutes.
These are only application level features, at the OS level Windows XP has system restore points and Vista/Win7 have those as well as previous versions for files. Apple's Time Machine technology does system and file level backups, not to mention the journaling file systems available on Linux.
Get with the times and you won't lose your work.
Hardware failure. and I respectfully hate your opinion.
I know this is somewhat irrelevant to the overall theme of this article, but how many people really give up after a few BOS? I'm sure this article was geared toward the tech minded. Right?
As for revolution in the in the OS market, I'm not sure it will ever really happen. think about any aspect of life, your job for instance. Why is it that Joe Schmoe helps start a company, works for 15 years and is excellent at what he does, but the new guy comes in and works for 2 years and gets the big promotion that Joe has been waiting for? For the same reason that Operating system remains mostly unchanged. Ones perception is so influenced by the original concept that someone like Joe Schmoe can continue to refine the experience but never evolve the experience.
Sorry...BSOD...but I'm sure everyone knows what i meant.
And not to sound like a broken record but i to will say every bsod i have ever had was hardware related, graphics or memory. in the case of windows operating systems, it incredibly hard to create an OS that is compatible with so many different hardware and software configurations.
Just checking as I didn't find it referenced, or I missed it. The pictured computer. A Xerox?
that keyboard looks badass
Personally I am quite happy with the features OSX has in this regards (I don't own Vista so I cannot compare). TimeMachine basically allows me to have a backup of everything I changed hourly.
I understand your point though. What you basically are suggesting is that the saved changes that allow people to "undo" an action should permanently be saved so that, in an event of a crash, one could completely restore previous work.
I, for my part, prefer an OS that DOESN'T CRASH! I know it is impossible but when I switched from XP to OSX I basically even forgot a computer could crash and that is the main point. Regardless of the save features a computer crash always makes you lose time, a lot or a little it depends, but if they happen quite often then this time adds up considerably.
Maybe some "real time tracking and saving" of everything could help. A sort of "one hour buffer of all changes". Apple has an interesting approach, but it is limited to the hourly time machine backups. TimeMachine saves every hour for a week, every day for a month and every month until the HD is full. That seems to me an interesting compromise between flexibility and rational use of HD space. The problem is always discering which apps and which operations are crucial and which not. Because, even if they are bigger, todays HD are finite.
And people also have a lot of multimedia material they previously didn't have, which quickly fills the HD. 6 years ago 90% of HD data were text of other documents, nowadays it is maybe 10% (talking about the average home user here). 90% of todays data are pictures (bigger and bigger files thanks to better cameras), video, music, movies you name it.
So, discering which operations to track and save in real time is really hard. For me, amateur photographer, saving all changes and editing in real time of a picture might not be as crucial as for a photographer, so why should my HD be full of saved editing?
As said, a better solution would be to create a sort of buffer, which doesn't get lost in an event of a crash, and then use a TimeMachine sort of backup for the "longer timeframe".
Vista and Windows 7 have a "previous versions" menu that does pretty much the same thing as time machine.
And yet, when somebody tries to change operating systems, there's a huge outcry from people who insist that the old way was better. Look at the Windows start menu since XP: how many geeks do you know who insist on switching it back to that outdated old Windows 95 style classic start menu because "it's better"? Newsflash: it's not better.
Incidentally, OneNote is an application that doesn't have any way to save your work: stuff you do just gets saved. The fact that the save icon is still a 3.5" disk while we already have a new generation of computer users who have never even seen a 3.5" disk is an indication that it's on the way out. Stuff won't just get saved to a file: it'll get saved, no matter where. On your drive, your USB key, in the cloud, wherever you need it. What with the various cloud initiatives from all the big players and Previous Versions now being a standard Windows feature (so that you'll always be able to go back if you want to discard your changes), I'd suspect this no-save functionality OneNote has will creep into more applications in the near future. And I also suspect that a lot of "knowledgeable" people will switch it off simply because "the old way was better."
So basically, you, being a journalist who I'm assuming uses computers every day, forgot to save your document, even though you know "shit happens," and you react by complaining about how computers aren't perfect enough?
Personally, I don't want word to auto-save every work or letter I type. I make mistakes when I write, I reword things and delete things that I no longer want to say. It makes more sense to me to intelligently save whenever I've made any progress on a work, usually saving in different files so later I can look at the different versions of that particular piece. You're interacting with the computer. It's a tool. You tell it when to save.
As for a fundamentally different computer, concepts at this come up all the time and they're all shot down in the end, because the "shirt with a stain" copy already has too much steam. You can't just start a completely new way to use a computer and expect the masses to cling to it, because even if it is technically better, people are used to how PC's and Macs work now, what they do now, and anything else would only seem more difficult and complicated. Someday hopefully we will have all those things people wish PC's could do, but it'll be done through slow progress and evolution, not by the hand of god.
Why cann't it save it all the time and then on request provide you with a view on how this document looked 2 hours and 13 minutes ago? And then have an option to export or consolidate a final version that only has the latest revision (so you can send that file over to someone else and not have all the history with it). It is much easier to the end user for the computer to just work and to just care about the users data.
Just recently I had a severe case of accidental deletion. But to Vista's credit, it was able to restore the whole folder and subfolders in no time, as it does indeed automatically keep a version history. I didn't have to turn it on, nor designate a particular folder to be monitored - it just worked. Actually in the past I have gone out of my way to turn this feature off to conserve HD space, but now with the abudant low cost storage we have access to it's not even close to being an issue.
I thought XP did this too? Perhaps it doesn't do it so well.
Have you looked at opensolaris and it's use of zfs to do versioning of files? Couple that with network backups and you'll (almost never) lose anything.
However, I think you really missed the point. I was diverted from one task to another a long time ago. When I got back, I couldn't find the notes I made for the first task. I couldn't remember what the file's name was or even which machine I was using at the time. Fortunately a keyword search found it. It's sifting through the clutter that's the real issue.
If you've bluescreened XP multiple times in a row, you're doing it wrong.
I must really be the only one who hasn't had a BSOD since Windows 98 on my old Vextrec.
Also, the qwerty/dvorak argument is stupid because regular people like myself everybody else in the world uses qwerty just fine. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Stop whining. Folder/file hierarchies with consistent naming schemes a very logically sound way to organize vast amounts of information. Manual file saves are here to stay, because they're USEFUL - what if you actually WANT to revert to the file you opened this morning instead of manually undoing all the changes you've made?
As for the blue screens - Use hardware that has proper drivers available. Almost all of the bluescreens I've seen since XP have been due to faulty hardware or crappy drivers.
Did I mention "stop whining"?
If you can't use the auto save function then by all means go throw another $1500 at a Mac. The sales people at the Apple store will be more than happy to take your money. Auto save has been a staple in Office products for at least the last 3 versions.
The blue screen of death may even be attributed too the aging hardware. Bad memory and hard drives cause BSODs as well. Its not only a flawed OS here. What happens when your Mac tries to right to bad memory? The same thing will happen, whether you call it a BSOD or the ever lasting beach ball, it happens on both sides of the fence.
This exists in some regards. Look at OpenSolaris' implementation of Time Slider by use of ZFS. Possibly one of the greatest feats of computing (IMO) in the last few years. Delete a file by accident? Go back. Make a change? Go back. Versioning but not just for docs, for all files on the system.
http://channelsun.sun.com/video/opensolaris+demo:+time+slider+in+opensolaris+2008.11/2972356001
I have been a tech for close to 10 years, in all that time, 90% of the time I encountered a blue screen it was because the user was doing somthing stupid, something the user installed that had no business on a computer (im looking at you, comet cursor), or hardware failure. xp is rock solid.
Most users much as yourself, are just that low-end USERS. Unfortunately this carries with it the ignorance so explicitly described in your article. As others have said install a newer operating system, or better yet learn how to use your current setup. Since Windows 3.1 I have NEVER had a blue screen on a personal computer. The only ones I have had the pleasure of dealing with- were bad motherboards.
These cases had nothing to do with the software. If it did happen to be the software, chances are YOU are the one that messed up your own operating system by running malicious software or always using the Admin account.
Should there be a screen that tells you exactly why your computer has an error? Who's to say, but most likely you as well as other users would jack things up worse in the process of trying to fix it.
There will never be an Idiot proof computer. It's like a car- Change the oil, regular maintenance and maybe it wont leave you on the side of the road.
I'm not an advanced user or anything, but my documents always auto-saved in Word. At my last job I spent all day using Word and Excel, and if for any reason the program crashed, there would be an auto-saved copy of whatever I was working on available when I re-opened the program. I'm not sure what version of Word this guy was using, but I didn't do anything special to the configurations to get this to work.
I think what he's saying here is that it should be the OS that figures this all out, not the word processing app. I wouldn't have to autosave and neither would the app if the OS just knew what I was doing.
Now here's the problem: an OS is an operating system. Not to get all basic on your ass, but that is it. It should manage a slew of inputs and outputs and storage. In the networked era, we have to add security to the mix. Storing and tracking every bit of I/O is a very problematic security issue, especially if you want multiple resources accessing things. Again all part of this 'system'.
So what could you do? You make autosave a part of the system API. Easy, except we need developers to actually know it is there and use it well. The only other option is for the OS to track everything you do but "in a secure way." Now go write an app that lets the OS know that this part shouldn't be tracked and that part should. Seems like he is saying as well that this all should have been figured out 10 years ago with XP. These ideas were all certainly there on the table, but this would have easily doubled the MS security issues, which we know were already a big problem to begin with. So here it is: your computer can talk to every other computer in the world. That's your evolution. Magic-save will have to wait.
Michael, I hope you clarify things a little better. This might help too: don't invite a flame war in your first paragraph. Learn from this lesson, setup a skype with all your engadget posters and have a big roundtable about how to make some of this site actually useful to computing enthusiasm. This fanboy-ism crap is getting old, and so easy to avoid.
There's a flaw in the logic here. That is that the way computers *are* is because that's the way they *were*, and that's the major reason. without that history, computers would be totally different. I think that's poor logic. File access works as it does to some degree because of history, but also because disks work a certain way. You *could* have the OS constantly monitoring memory to detect for changes and write them to disk in case your computer crashes, but then the performance would be garbage (why have memory if you're constantly keeping writing it to disk, which is orders of magnitude slower?). Maybe you can take a specific example of an office application that backs up what you're working on, but again, as mentioned, they all do that. I'm not clear on how you lost what you wrote, exactly. You should, of course, be using an online office app like google's, which backs up your changes regularly.
Maybe, maybe, the OS could do something like a virtual memory space that gets dumped to disk on occasion, but it would have to be on irregular intervals, so as not to kill performance, but often enough to keep data recent.
Folders exist because we use filing cabinets? OK. How else would we organize them? Buckets? Just "save" files, and find them by search? The folder structure seems like a reasonable way to organize things (in fact, I'd argue your filing cabinet exists because it makes sense to put things in folders, and it would make more sense to have deep nesting of folders, which you can't really do with a filing cabint, but you can do with a computer, plus search and index. Oh what a wonderful age we live in).
In any case, there are performance considerations that largely dictate the way OS's work. History is obviously a factor, but its not like old habits are the only thing keeping us from a magic new world of operating systems.
I think the real "revolution" will be when the OS vendors stop trying to keep everything installed locally. I don't expect a computer to work all the time. What I want is to be set up in such a way that if my drive crashes, I can log in from another computer and get right back to work (or close to it). I'm an Ubuntu fan for that reason. Install, grab your apps, and you're pretty much ready to go. Don't have to call India to re-enable the XP license key anymore. I have a craptop from 2000, a Samsung Q1, a new HP laptop, Two old desktops, and two mid-range servers. All of them run the same OS, and I'll be honest. Life is pretty easy as a result. Same with Android. Open up the platform, dammit.
Also, if XP is suddenly blue-screening, that's very likely a hardware issue, unless you've installed something recently. not something the OS can do much about.
I can't really discern the point of this article. I guess you're just lamenting that computer technology doesn't move EVEN faster than it already does? Do you also complain that there's been no major innovation in cars in the past 100 years? (Before anyone comments on that: hybrids, electric vehicles, alternative fuel, etc. is all ancient tech.)
"Why, for example, does almost every program force users to save their work?"
Gee, maybe because that's the preferred method for most people? There are word processors that auto-save, manually-save, and real-time-save. So why the complaint? Variety is a great thing. We're not communists here, choice is OK!
You complain that you sometimes have auto-save as an option, but you have to go through the grueling 30 second task of setting it up. Wow, so I guess you live on fast-food or have your own chef, have a maid/butler to wash your clothes and fetch things for you, and so on... must be nice.
Computers don't read your mind (yet), and everyone has their own particular way they like to do things, so there's absolutely no way to make a PC that's perfect for everyone. I know I spend a good couple hours setting up an OS to my liking when I first get it (including turning OFF auto-save in whatever office suite I'm using).
Something I've observed as someone not too up on OS technologies, using my Mac, having 8/10 of inevitable lock-ups only slowing down the one program as opposed to Windows locking up completely is a big advantage.
I'm really not trying to start anything here, but I just spent the last 2 hours reading through every comment posted, and I think most of you missed the point. I don't think this dude was asking to get flamed. I think what he was asking you guys was, "what do you think will be next" or "what are your thoughts on how to improve todays OS's?" I think most people just got caught up on the whole BSoD thing. So what, he might have messed up, but I really don't feel that the whole point of the article was why is or isn't there an auto save (or the whole Dvorak thing, that came outta left field haha).
What are my thoughts? I dunno. I just felt bad for poor ol' Michael, I feel like all the techys out there ganged up on him when all he really wanted was their opinion on future OS's.
Keep up the good work Michael (we Michael's gotta stick together =p)
For all you fellas out there who have pointed out auto-recovery, that's not it. The writer is talking about better mental models for using computers. Go read About Face 3 and think about how software design imposes constraints on your computer use. Sure, geeks are pretty good at hierarchical file systems, but many people keep all their docs in the Desktop or "My Documents" folder.
You can say that they're stupid, but since you're so smart, why not work out a way for the masses to have better computing interactions? MS tried with the Ribbon and Apple is actively overturning the game with iPhone apps. You never even see the file system on that device. And no one misses it.
Saying you got a blue screen of death today is sort of like saying your typewriter got jammed. It just doesn't happen anymore, and if it did, it was probably your fault.