Apple Terminal Server in the future?
Chris Howard over at Apple Matters thinks so, and he thinks the new iMac is the warm-up. The problem with the new iMac as Chris sees it--and I agree--is that it's an inelegant solution to the media center problem. It's one thing to have iTunes video on your personal computer to watch Lost episodes while you're procrastinating, but once the computer becomes a media center, it's no longer personal. It becomes, well, a center; communal property that the whole family wants in on. Some people want to watch videos while other people are working. Others want to listen to music while others are watching videos while others are trying work. And I want them all to go away and stop reading over my shoulder and let me check my livejournal friends list in peace.
The new iMacs, though, like all their predecessors, are fundamentally single console machines: only one person can be sitting in front of the computer at a time, running a single application in the foreground. If someone else in the room wants to use iTunes, I have to give up my spot at the desk and go do dishes or something. As long as the only way to use the computer is to sit in front of it (or across the room from it), then a media center PC isn't much of a media center...or much of a PC, as far as that goes. There are ways around some of these issues (X-forwarding, VNC, NFS), but for the most part they aren't really for public consumption and require at least one extra computer and a lot of free time. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Enter the terminal server and thin client. Traditional Unix X servers (including Apple's own X-11 server/client) support multiple simultaneous logins, so that many people can have thier own desktops served from the same computer to many different workstations that are nothing more than a small cpu, a monitor and a keyboard. All the files are stored on a central machine, and all the programs are run there. But when you sit down in front of a screen, you don't know whether you're sitting at the "real" computer or a remote terminal. Microsoft has toyed with this idea, too, with Windows Terminal Server and those wireless tablets they were selling for a while that let you login and get your desktop from anywhere in the room. There's no reason Aqua couldn't be made to do this--in fact most of the groundwork already exists in OS X Server. With right peripherals, these new iMacs could really become the centers they're supposed to be, and not simply no-longer-quite-personal-computers taking up space in the middle of the living room. There could be wireless thin terminals for bloggin and checking email--think tablet or an updated eMate--thin HD-ready thin clients designed specifically to plug into the TV--think AirTunes video--and other AirPort Express-like devices to attach to just about any media device you want until you run out of bandwidth. Come to think of it, you'd probably want to stream the HD video over ethernet for the moment. You could also use other computers an network appliances as thin clients, all running programs off of the centeral server. Devices that don't have screens (the AirPort Express serving the stereo with AirTunes, for example) could be controlled remotely from any other connected device, The TV could be controlled remotely or via Front Row.
And I can be off reading my email on my eMate2005 in the office, and not even know what's happening on Lost.
