Comments on: Back to the futur…mainframe, centralized computing anyone?

By: Trend Komputer di Abad 21? « SuGembelÂ®

Trend Komputer di Abad 21? « SuGembelÂ® — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:56:41 +0000

[...] Computing is Back Back to the futurâ€¦mainframe, centralized computing anyone? ClearCube pushes centralized computing with thin PCs Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival the PC As [...]

By: Everything and the Mobile Software Universe… » The Mobile OS of the future is…a service platform!

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:45:51 +0000

[...] and this is a point I’ve discussed already (Back to the future…mainframe, centralized computing anyone?) where the clear split between local and server is fading away, but is it really applicable to [...]

By: tmenguy

tmenguy — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:02:53 +0000

Hi raddedas and thanks for the usefull comments.

Yes true the UI part is THE thing to be customized per device, as with data input.
Anyway many apps could have their data on a server : PIM , as I’ve mentionned mapping software, photos, etc…For sure it will be really possible if the network latency is reducing (see Gmail …), which won’t come tomorrow, but will happen sometime.

a good MVC separation ought to make the argument less relevant anyway, but good abstraction takes space and that’s another thing in short supply on mass market mobiles

Sure RAM and CPU constraints are key here (directly related top the phone cost) . Anyway for working (at Open-Plug) also on Ultra Low Cost phones, I really think that such an abstraction may be put in place even in this segment …. if it has been taylored from the ground with RAM and CPU in mind…and in those platefrom a “PIM on the server app” won’t come anytime soon

But for sure at the end I fully agree with you that some app are “innately networked apps” if it requires big data and/or shared data, and it is perhaps here that technology has to be matured to be more widespread…

By: raddedas

raddedas — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:45:12 +0000

And yes, I shouldn’t skim-read the end bit, obviously the other great example where server-based processing works is when you rely on massive amounts of data like in mapping, which could rarely be stored on the phone – I’ll file that under “innately networked apps” for these purposes

By: raddedas

raddedas — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:42:47 +0000

I’m not an advocate of the “write once run everywhere”, in the Mobile space applications have to be so much taylored, adapted to the hardware, customizable and so on, that being able to have a common part, “written once, run on a server” and a customized one for each kind of device/Operator may be of high value…

The problem for mobiles is, it’s almost always the UI and painting code which needs adapting, with the actual logic staying exactly the same – and for the kind of things you want to do on a mobile the logic is rarely all that intensive. So running the logic on a server achieves higher bandwidth usage (at a cost) with the same amount of handset tailoring (for most applications you’d want to do on a phone). If you needed to run a series of processor heavy image filters on a 5Mp photo and you sat on an HSDPA network with plenty of spare capacity I could see an advantage to outsourcing it to a server, but for a lot of things network latency will kill any advantage to the phone for the forseeable future.

Obviously for innately networked apps, dump everything on the server with the high capacity networking and just send display data to the client by all means, but the context from the quote was implying replacement of desktop apps… a good MVC separation ought to make the argument less relevant anyway, but good abstraction takes space and that’s another thing in short supply on mass market mobiles…

By: tarek speaks mobile… » Blog Archive » Carnival Of The Mobilists #51

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:22:40 +0000

[...] Elsewhere Scott Shaffer of the Pondering Primate Blog ponders whether Google could sell premium Keywords and link them to specific sites. Patrick Altoft at Mad4MobilePhones uses Googles new Co-op service to create a search engine for their Top 50 Mobile Websites. Tomi Ahonen at the Communities Dominate Brands weblog gives us a very indepth look at why Social Networking will become a “killer app” for 3G mobile. The guys at 66-Mobile give us an introduction to the new Nokia N95, the latest “Multimedia Computer” from the Finnish company. And finally we have Thomas Menguy whose piece from the Everything and The Mobile Software Universe takes a look at the importance of the mainframe to the mobile industry. [...]