DearYou

This is the last of four articles on my journey to complete adoption of cloud computing. The first three can be found at:

http://dearthey.tumblr.com/post/9416391468/on-cloud-computing-and-why-i-was-wrong

http://dearthey.tumblr.com/post/9487347375/continuing-adventures-in-the-cloud-part-1-ish

http://dearthey.tumblr.com/post/9505155470/head-in-the-cloud-an-interlude-and-warning

So…

I’m going to get this out of the way right now, In the last week, I’ve become a gushing addict of this technology. I’m an early adopter; this is what we do. I get it into my head to try something new, and if I like it even a bit more than my old system, I figure out how to customize it to fit my exact needs and then I run screaming joyfully at anyone who will listen that they’re doing everything wrong.

It’s really, really annoying. For everyone around me. Especially my wife. I’m sorry dear.

But, that being said, if you’re not adopting this tech, you’re doing everything wrong.

Home computers were designed with an eye towards making life easier for people. They didn’t, at first, but that was the plan. The initial problem was simply a lack of application. It was an overpriced, elaborate typewriter that you could play text-based (yes!) games on. It wasn’t really until the corporate world adopted them that PCs became a standard and useful staple of the average home office. Really, it’s been productivity that has pushed the medium forward. To a point.

Productivity, and the needs of the masses to be more productive, more efficiently, have been at the focal point of the computing world for so long that, when mobile computing replaced the fixed desktop as the channel of choice, pretty much everyone missed the boat on what portable meant.

Portable does not mean: Do everything my home computer does, except not as good and with the constant annoyance of having my battery die. The what of portable should have been an answer to the why of portable.

Why do I need to carry my computer out into the world with me? Is it just to carry my work with me or is it to make my life easier?

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There’s been a lot of stink from the non-Mac community about Steve Jobs’ categorization of the iPad as a “post PC device” at this year’s SDCC. Microsoft, in particular, has been going apoplectic over the phrase.

However…

What was more interesting to me (after all, the fact that we have one post PC device doesn’t mean the post PC age is upon us) was the notion, touted at the same conference, that the desktop is becoming “just another device.”

While it’s certainly a prophetic idea, in no way is this a reality reflected by the current computing landscape. In fact, I would say the only thing that can make the transfer to full cloud computing even a remote (ha!) possibility for most people, is ownership of a robust home computer to act as a hub for any cloud devices you might be using in the field. Mere devicehood is not in the cards for desktops while desktops (and primary home laptops) are still Capital C computers, and cloud devices are not. Yet.

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So the last couple of days have been something of a steep learning curve for me. While Linux is a joy to work in (especially now that I’ve found the absolute best distro for me. For now), the sheer variety of customization options, distributions and machine specific problems have been a little overwhelming. 

Ubuntu only lasted a day. I discovered that I liked the Jolicloud app in Google Chrome so much that I wasn’t really spending anytime outside of the browser. Which made the two hours I’d spend tricking out Ubuntu to look like Mac OS more of a waste of time than that day I spent in line for tickets to a certain movie by a certain director whose name rhymes with Whorge Pukas. 

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I laughed when Chrome OS was announced; A great big hearty mwah ha ha.

Why, I pondered (as I choked on the effervescent bubbles of funny rolling up from my belly), would anyone spend hundreds of dollars on a machine with little (or no) storage, just so they could work entirely in a web browser all day? 

I’m not laughing anymore. 

When Apple announced the launch of iCloud I was sorely tempted to smack myself in the face. When shopping for a new computer a few months earlier, I had laughed my ass off (this always gets me in trouble, I see this now) at the MacBook Airs on display. Sure, they’re thin, and pretty and, unlike my iPad, run a full OS, but 64GB as a storage starting point? For a thousand bucks? In 2011? Ha!

But then, like I said, iCloud was announced and it all made sense. 

I don’t need to carry my music collection with me? Or my documents? And I get to carry around a laptop that weighs less than a burrito at my favorite Mexican joint? Sold.

Not so fast. 

You see, while I had been laughing at the MacBook Air that day, I talked myself into buying an iMac instead. A sexy beast to be sure, but looking more than a little chunky for my day to day purposes once I’d made the decision to go thin*. And it cost $1700. So, yeah, three months later, I was not going to win the fight to give another thirteen or fourteen hundred bucks to my Apple overlords (Hail Hydra) with my lovely but financially conservative wife.

So I grumbled, and I toyed with the idea of putting my iMac on Kijiji (not met with positive reception by my family) to finance my craving for Air, and then, as I often do, I sulked in front of a computer.

Two days ago I read an article about ditching Windows for something called Ubuntu. Being somewhat tech literate, I had heard the term before and, doing a bit of digging, I discovered that it was the most popular Linux distribution currently on offer. I did some more digging and discovered that Linux had grown up a bit since I’d last poked Redhat with the dirty stick of distrust about a decade ago.

I went into my bedroom closet (where pieces of tech that I don’t want my wife to remember I own go to die) and dusted off my two year old Dell notebook running Windows 7, followed some very simple instructions on how to exorcise Microsoft from the now bloated PC I’d once loved and, fifteen minutes later, was poking around inside* Ubuntu. 

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A picture of a tree can be beautiful. It can be accurate, interpretive, colorful or grim. It can inspire or depress, provoke thought, calm or confrontation. But it can never drop an acorn and you can never sit beneath its branches. A picture of a tree is not a tree.